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Other Books by Mrs. Sangster. 



Life on High Levels. Familiar Talks on the Con- 
duct of Life. ^ 12mo. 90 cents. 

Encouraging chapters for young people on Christian living. 

Maidie's Problem, and One of Themselves. 12mo. 
75 cents. 

Two stories for girls, with lessons of Christian usefulness In 
city and country. 





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JIa/^Uc^ I . ^^i<f^ 



CHEERFUL TO-DAYS 



AND 



TRUSTFUL TO-MORROWS 



BY / 

MARGARET E. SANGSTER 

Author of " Life on High Levels," "Maidie's Problem," 
** Home Life Made Beautiful," Etc. 



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** 'Cln&ernsatb are the everlasting arms,*' 




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THE LIBRARY O 
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Two Copies Receiver* 

JUL 2 190'' 

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Copyright by 

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Eaton & Mains Press, 
150 Fifth Avenue, New York, 



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WHO, WITH ME, REMEMBERS REVERENTLY 
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CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Freedom from Worry I 

II. Repose of Manner lo 

III. When the Children Are Around Us i8 

IV. When the Young People Grow Up 27 

V, Home Reading 34 

VI. Thrift for the Rainy Day 42 

VII. Days of Illness 51 

VIII. Comfort in Sorrow 62 

IX. Looking Forward 73 

X. Music at Home 81 

XI. Of Beauty and Its Charm 8g 

XII. Mothers and Sons.. . . o 96 

XIII. Linked with Many Lives in 

XIV. The Keeping of Home Anniversaries 129 

XV. The Plant Heart's-ease 138 

XVI. The Easter Joy 148 

vii 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVII. Mornings with the Bible 156 

XVIII. Sweet Hour of Prayer 162 

XIX. Growing Old 167 

XX. Home Awaiting 172 

XXL A Study of Angels 181 

XXII. Talking with Our Heavenly Father 202 

XXIII. Devout Women of an Elder Day 214 

XXIV. Daily Problems 230 

XXV. With Level Eyes 245 

XXVI. Young Women and Self-support 254 

XXVII. Counting the Blessings 263 

XXVIII. Looking unto Jesus 271 

XXIX. The Sunny Heart 277 

XXX. Beyond the Horizon's Rim 288 

XXXL The Habit of Holding On 301 

XXXII. One More Word for Our Girls 306 

viii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Margaret E. Sangster Frontispiece 

** Tucked, Safe and Cozy, into their Beds". ..Facing p. 20 '^ 

/ 
** Beside the Glowing Hearth ". ** 36 

** One Little Daughter" '* 68 ^ 

** Sing in the Evening Twilight, When the 

Shadow of Eve is Nigh " " 86 '"^ 

The Sewing Meeting ** 126 ^ 

** Last at the Cross, and Earliest at the Tomb " " 148 / 

The Annunciation. (After the Painting by 

D. G. Rossetti.) *' 196 

ix 



CHEERFUL TO-DAYS 

AND 

TRUSTFUL TO-MORROWS 



CHAPTER I 

Freedom from Worry 

She was not young and her path had been 
rough and steep^ this dear little mother whose 
sweet face shines npon me^ out of the dim past, 
like a beautiful beaming star. It was a face 
which kept to old age something of its childish 
sweetness and eagerness of expression^ for to 
this dear one it was given never to lose the child 
hearty and it was, and is, u.nto such as she that 
our blessed Lord has always revealed the inner 
meaning of the Kingdom. Wistful and loving 
and animated, let cares and burdens be ever so 
numerous, it was hers to know the full blessed- 
ness of that text, "The beloved of the Lord 
shall dwell in safety by him.^^ Her sorrows had 

been many. She had known the exquisite pain 

1 



Cheerful To-days and 

of losing her firstborn in his lovely babyhood, 
she had seen an older laddie stricken down in a 
moment, and through one never forgotten sum- 
mer she had watched the gradual decline of 
another precious son; so that three times the 
light had been blotted from her sky and the 
noonday had been as the night. 

Then, from wonderful and elastic health, 
she had been plunged into the long weariness 
of an invalid's life. It began with a serious 
illness w^hich followed closely upon her widow- 
hood, while her three remaining children were 
all very j^oung. That exhausting illness, in 
which for weeks she hung upon the border land 
and which brought her to the very edge of the 
dark river, so that life seemed to pull her out 
and back when her feet were cold in the rush- 
ing flood, and her familj^ her pastor and her 
phj^sician had all given her up, left her at last, 
but with only the fragments of the strong con- 
stitution she had once had. The twenty-five 
remaining years were more or less a battle, and 
she fought that battle with a persistent courage 
and a quality of cheerfulness which she could 
never have had if One like unto the Son of God 

had not been ever at her side. 

2 



Trustful To-morrows 

She had been tried also in the crucible of 
limited means. The house must be kept, the 
children must be educated, the Lord's tenth 
must be devoted, and the purse was always nar- 
row, and sometimes the gray gaunt wolf not 
only scratched at the door but dared to put his 
head inside. ISTever mind. He was always 
thrust back, and the door slammed boldly in his 
face. Kith and kin of hers were few but those 
she had stood by her in loyalty of love and trust, 
and hers was the spirit of one, her friend, who 
in similar circumstances said, ^^I have no fear. 
If it be necessary for the Lord to work a miracle 
for my children and me he will do it.^^ 

The barrel of meal did not waste, and the 
cruse of oil did not fail, though now and then 
the scoop was scanty and there were but few 
drops in the flask. The children grew up, there 
were books around them, they were sent to the 
best schools; their advantages were not less- 
ened because their earthlv father had left them 
no fortune except a sunny temperament and a 
boundless trust in God. 

One great advantage they had, that it never 

even occurred to them to complain of their lot, 

to regard self-denial as a hardship, or to apolo- 

3 



Cheerful To-days and 

gize for anything in their surroundings. One 
day a second-hand piano came home. Their 
little parlor^ with its ingrain carpet^ marble- 
topped table and six haircloth-covered chairs, 
appeared to them a drawing room fit for a queen 
— as indeed it was^ for a queen presided over it 
and sat there smiling and happy when the little 
daughter ran her fingers up and down the ivory 
keys. 

The grace of freedom from worry was always 
in that home. 

One evening, at the end of a rather tedious 
day^ when the money was low and the coal in 
the bin was also low and winter was sounding 
his advance in chill blasts of the north wind 
and fierce tussles of the bare tree boughs^ the 
little mother went to her room for a half hour's 
rest. She alwa3^s said that she was lying wide 
awake, that she had not so much as fallen asleep 
for an instant, and if we thought that she was 
mistaken we never told her so ; for, whether it 
was a dream or whether it was a vision, the Lord 
of glory vouchsafed a comforting revelation of 
himself by means of it to the handmaid whose 
chief joy was his service. 

She said she was aware suddenly of a pres- 



Trustful To-mokkows 

ence in the room. ^^I looked about/^ here her 
blue eyes grew very soft and earnest^ ^^to see if 
it was M. or Isa, but I had not heard the door 
open, and the door was shut. ISTobcdy was 
there. But all above and around me the atmos- 
phere grew bright, and through the clear bright- 
ness formed a something still more radiant and 
golden, bending and brooding over me as I lay 
in the bed and looked up, and then, sweet and 
very tender, came a word I heard in my heart 
just as if a voice had spoken : 

" '^My God shall supply all your need. Be 
not faithless, but believing.^ ^^ 

Dream or vision, it gave her new strength for 
the way and she arose and went on, rejoicing in 
the Lord. 

We hear a good deal in these days about the 

futilitj^ of worry, and there are many who try 

to live in the peace and serenity which come 

from abandoning all needless anxiety. But I 

cannot quite understand how any of us, in this 

peculiarly changeful world, can live in entire 

freedom from this scourge unless we follow the 

apostolic injunction, "In everything by prayer 

and supplication with thanksgiving let your 

requests be made known unto God.^^ 
2 5 



Cheerful To-days and 

It is the Christian's privilege to meet every 
situation with an undaunted front, never to be 
taken by surprise, never to be found off guard. 
While it is comparatively easy to cease from 
worry for one's self, we all know how hard it is 
not to carry vicarious worries. The son, dear 
as your own life, who loses his position and 
cannot find another, the daughter, a few years 
ago like a rose in bloom, so fresh, so fair, now 
crippled with rheumatism, or failing before 
your eyes with some relentless and subtle mal- 
ady which defies medical skill, the husband 
stricken in his prime with paralysis, and thence- 
forward all his days compelled to walk softly, 
the friend bereaved, and unable to rise above 
the weight of grief, the acquaintance taking a 
wrong turn in the road, the pastor unappre- 
ciated in his parish, all the wonderful social 
network woven around our homes and affections 
• — how difficult it is to refrain from worry about 
these. 

For, you see, sympathy is as much a daily 
duty as tranquillity, and we are as really boimd 
to fulfill the law of Christ by bearing one an- 
other's burdens as by cessation from the strain 
of fretting and fussing and fuming, of wearing 

6 



Trustful To-morrows 

ourselves and our friends out by unavailing 
care. 

The secret of the blessedness which sets us 
free to serve is, I am sure, found only in unre- 
served acceptance of the will of God as best for 
us and ours, and in daily communion with the 
Master. Once we have lived into that dear and 
intimate friendship with Jesus which enables 
us to feel, without a question, that his will is not 
only his choice for us but ours too, we step 
into a land of serenity where never intrudes a 
single chilling blast of doubt. 

"I know no life divided, 
O Lord of life, from thee." 

"I would rather walk with God in the dark 
Than walk alone in the light." 

"Looking to Jesus — 

Ever serener, 
Working or suffering, 

Be thy demeanor." 

There is absolutely no possibility of worry for 
the soul which thus knows the Lord. 

Of course there are differences of disposition 
which must be taken into account. Happy are 
they whom the Lord, from their cradles, has 



Cheerful To-days and 

endowed with a capacity for discerning the 
sun behind the clouds. To see the bright side 
instinctively is a rare and gracious gift. A 
man of ^*^cheerful yesterdays and confident to- 
morrows^^ is usually a pleasant companion, and 
a good comrade on the road of life. In Mrs. 
Oliphant's recently published autobiography — 
the story it is of a very brave and noble life — 
there is a chapter in which she tells how she 
had come to a crisis in her affairs, and there 
were a number of helpless people depending on 
her and her little slender pen. 

^T recollect coming home in a kind of despair 
and being met at the door, when it was opened 
to me, by the murmur of the merry house, the 
cheerful voices, the overflowing home, every 
corner full and warm as if it had a steady in- 
come and secure revenue at its back. I used to 
work very late then, always till two in the morn- 
ing; I can't remember whether I worked that 
night, but I think it was one of the darkest 
nights and I could not think what I should do.'' 

iN'ext morning came an unexpected visitor, 

and unexpected help, and ^^the road did run 

round that corner after all. Our Father in 

heaven had settled it all the time for the chil- 

8 



Trustful To-morrows 

dren; there had never been anv doubt. I was 
absolutely without hope or help. I did not 
know where to turn, and here, in a moment, all 
was clear again — the road free in the sunshine, 
the cloud in a moment rolled away/^ 

God's dear child ought not to have been with- 
out Ifioye, There is always blue sky some- 
where, and all things are always working to- 
gether for good to those who love God. The 
peace that passeth all understanding shall keep 
us, as the sentry keeps the camp, if we but trust 

and obey. 

9 



Cheerful To-days and 



CHAPTER II 

Repose of Manner 

Even if one is conscious of agitation and tur- 
moil underneath, there is a distinct gain in its 
control by the cultivation of repose of manner. 
Largely this may be a matter of habit, and one 
may so discipline her muscles, and so accustom 
them to obedience, that she will repress the pet- 
ulant frown, forbid her lips the down-drooping 
curve, and train her body to express ease and 
quiet rather than impatience and irritability. 
The dignity of a tranquil demeanor so far ex- 
ceeds the opposite — lack of poise — which is 
shown in undue emphasis, in jerky movements, 
and frequent complaint, that for its mere 
beauty, aside from its ethical value, one should 
seek its possession. All the varieties of scold- 
ing, nagging, fault-finding, and bemoaning 
one's fate, born of insufficient self-respect and 
of intermittent self-control, are impossible to 
her who has made repose her garment of de- 
fense, her chain armor, against the world. 

10 



Trustful To-morrows 

A good deal of our flurried and perturbed 
manner we owe to our tendency to indulge in 
both work and play beyond our strength. We 
do not know when to stop. We carry our golf- 
ing, our skating, our tennis, our driving, riding 
and walking to such an extent that instead of 
adding to our stock of health they exhaust it; 
and if this be true of recreation it is still more 
true of work. The mother is sewing on the lit- 
tle frock, and it must be finished by Saturday 
night. The frills and puffs and tucks are so 
elaborate that the sewing on the small maiden's 
Sabbath raiment is appalling if one remembers 
the drain that fine stitching makes on a not 
over-vigorous woman, so that she feels at last 
as if a sudden step on the floor or an unexpected 
question would make her scream or jump. Two 
questions arise : Why should a child's frock be 
other than simple? A plain little smock with 
no elaboration of ornament, with only a deep 
hem, is appropriate for any little girl, be her 
station what it may. The washerwoman's 
daughter and the queen's, during those happy 
years between three and twelve, should so far 
as style is concerned be dressed precisely alike. 

Then, why must the frock be done by a certain 

11 



Cheerful To-days and 

hour ; why must there be a new frock always for 
Sunday's wearing? Few small maidens are 
without a change of clothings and all that is 
requisite for church and Sunday school is some- 
thing whole and clean^ dainty from the laundry 
or the wardrobe^ but not necessarily new. The 
mother would do far better for herself and her 
child by stopping her work before she is very 
tired^ and by saving her nervous force for the 
pleasure of her home life. 

Man)?- a cross word is needlessly spoken^ many 
a jarring chord is struck^ many a time the 
wheels of the household grate harshly along the 
road, because there is friction in the mother's 
temper. . The temper which is adjusted to the 
day, which is fine-edged and keen yet never 
morose, which meets every difficulty with a 
brave spirit and never prints itself on a clouded 
countenance, is worth having, worth striving 
for, worth praying for day by day. If we can 
gain repose nowhere else we can find it in the 
little sanctuary of the closet. 

"I always knew when mother had been talk- 
ing with God,^^ said a man whose Christian life 
was full of sweetness and who was widely in- 
fluential. ^^She had a little room at the end of 

12 



Trusteul To-morrows 

the hall, and when she went in and shut fast 
the door we children walked softly past, for we 
knew that in there our mother was kneeling at 
the mercy seat/'' When she came forth her face 
shone. 

Another and contrasting picture comes to my 
mind. ^^I never was intimate with my mother, 
nor anything but afraid of her until I was 
eighteen years old/^ said a lady, a shadow of 
pain on her face. "Before my birth mother had 
had a great grief and she turned away from 
God. Her looks were always severe, and she 
was cold to her children though I do think she 
loved them.^^ 

A woman who in middle life retains the fresh- 
ness of girlhood in her complexion, and its grace 
in her step, whose face is the mirror of a beauti- 
ful soul, was one day asked how, during a long 
experience of physical suffering, she had kept 
herself from outward appearance of distress, 
from lines and marks which pain often leaves. 
"For one thing,^^ she said, "I know my Heaven- 
ly Father appoints everything, and so I take 
with joy whatever he sends. Then I know, too, 
that every trace of impatience in thought 

must leave its finger print on my face, so I 

13 



Cheerful To-days and 

am careful never to look fretful even for a 
moment/^ 

We have heard a great deal about the value 
of relaxation at certain intervals during our 
busiest days. Do we try it? If I could per- 
suade you, whose eyes are tired out, to simply 
fold your hands and close your eyes for five 
minutes every hour I should soon convince you 
that the weariness would be greatly relieved. If, 
now and then, we who cannot take our hands 
from the domestic helm — from the cooking and 
pickling and preserving, and the management 
of the house — would go by ourselves, sit down 
in a rocking-chair or lie upon a lounge for fif- 
teen minutes, allowing the mind to be a blank 
and the thoughts to fasten upon nothing, while 
hands and feet cease their clinging hold upon 
existence and relax as a baby's do, we should dis- 
cover that there is magic in even these bits of 
rest between times. And if every busy house- 
mother would just lie down one hour in the 
middle of the day, or retire by herself one hour 
every afternoon and read or think or sleep as 
she chose, she would live longer and be hap- 
pier for the experiment. 

Said a wise physician to his wife, ^^My dear, 

14 



Trustful To-morrows 

there is one thing on which I insist, and it is that 
you take the hour from three to four every after- 
noon and keep it for your own needs. Go to 
your own room and shut everybody out. I shall 
not intrude upon you ; no one else shall be per- 
mitted to intrude upon you — friend, servant, or 
child. Be alone then, and do whatever you 
please, but never intermit your hour of entire 
freedom and rest.^^ ^^To this kind provision 
for my health and comf ort,^^ said the wife, long 
afterward, ^^I am indebted for my elasticity of 
mind and body/^ 

I am not sure how far the multiform public 
activities of to-day are responsible for the jaded 
looks and loss of repose visible in some of our 
friends. To belong to a woman's club, with its 
agreeable social opportunities, its reading and 
discussing of literary papers, and its frequent 
beneficent efforts beyond its doors, is, for many 
women, an excellent thing; broadening their 
horizon, and either enlarging their knowledge 
of current events or refreshing their memories 
of world movements in the past. But some 
women belong to three, five, or seven clubs si- 
multaneously ; others are taxed by an excessive 

amount of church work, a few undertaking and 

15 



Cheerful To-days and 

carrying forward that which should be the task 
of all. As repose of manner is hardly consist- 
ent with the mental state which knows the pres- 
sure of hastC;, and of too many conflicting en- 
gagements, it is not to be attained by her who 
is bound by too strong a tether to boards, asso- 
ciations and clubs. 

May 1 repeat for you a beautiful prayer, writ- 
ten by Eowland Williams ? 

^^0 God, who makest cheerfulness the com- 
panion of strength but apt to take wings in time 
of sorrow, we humbly beseech thee if, in thy sov- 
ereign wisdom, thou sendest weakness yet for 
thy mercy^s sake deny us not the comfort of 
patience. Lay not more upon us, Heavenly 
Father, than thou wilt enable us to bear; and, 
since the fretfulness of our spirits is more hurt- 
ful that the heaviness of our burden, grant us 
that heavenly calmness which comes of owning 
thy hand in all things, and patience in tlie trust 
that thou doest all things well. Amen.^' 

"Wherever in the world I am, 

In whatsoe'er estate, 
I have a fellowship with hearts 

To keep and cultivate, 
A work of lowly love to do 

For the Lord on whom I wait. 
16 



Trustpul To-morrows 

"I ask thee for the daily strength 

To none that ask denied, 
A mind to blend with outward life 

While keeping at thy side ; 
Content to fill a little space 

If thou be glorified. 

"There are briers besetting every path 

That call for patient care ; 
There is a cross in every lot, 

And need for earnest prayer; 
But a lowly heart that leans on thee 

Is happy anywhere." 
17 



Cheerful To-days and 



CHAPTER III 

When the Children Are Around Us 

I DO not think life holds to any lips a sweeter 
cup, more honey-brimmed, more sparkling, than 
that the mother tastes when first she holds her 
little one in her arms. For this divine draught 
of pleasure she has dared the uttermost waves 
of anguish, has fought a duel with death, has 
plunged into depths of weakness and known 
mysterious perils which only motherhood un- 
derstands. Yet every woman who has .ever borne 
a babe will tell you that in the supreme hour of 
victory and joy she remembers the agony no 
more ; it is blotted out by the flood of bliss be- 
yond language or thought to describe. She and 
her child, bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh, 
these two — the new human being and the 
mother who cradled him under her arms before 
she held him in their tender circle — there is in 
all the world no bond like theirs; there is no 
glory of happiness which equals that which 

comes to any mother with any baby. 

18 



Trustful To-morrows 

And yet we know of reluctant maternity^ and 
we constantly see women refusing alike its pen- 
alties and its rewards, committing sin that 
they may evade it, declining to wear the most 
honorable of crowns and to assume the most 
potent of scepters. It is the peculiar loss of 
some women that they weigh in the balances the 
inconveniences and burdens of motherhood on 
the one hand, and its royal privileges on the 
other, and are afraid, or unwilling, or dis- 
trustful, and so rob themselves of their most 
beautiful right. 

There are childless women to whom God has 
denied the boon of motherhood. When this is 
his will it is to be accepted without repining, 
and such women are often compassionate and 
comprehending toward the children of others; 
toward the orphan, or the sick, or the poor who 
need helpers. Wives there are who deliberately 
choose to have no babes. And this is not always 
from selfish motives, sometimes it is from those 
of a high and conscientious order of thought; 
they fear that they could not rightly guide lit- 
tle children. As the years pass, when old age 
arrives, the childless people are the lonely peo- 
ple, and they are apt to realize that they have 

19 



Cheerful To-days and 

lost some very precious things from life; some 
wealth which they might have had but which 
they have missed. 

If one baby is a great delight then how much 
greater is a full nursery. When the brood is all 
under the mother's eye and hand at once the 
care may be incessant yet there is no end to the 
satisfaction. To see them all started for the 
day clean and well and dressed and wholesome 
and happj^, to see them all tucked safe and cozy 
into their beds at nighty each bairn with its 
prayers said and its story of the day told, what 
can be more thoroughly filled with the essence 
of homely content ! 

I am often very sorry for the first and for 

the only child, both being apt to receive an over 

share of discipline. Not invariably is it the 

good of the child which the mother seeks when 

she hedges its pathway with a bristling border 

of prickly ^^don'ts'^ and finds herself at her wit's 

end to devise original punishments. We are 

strangely complex, and even a loving mother 

may occasionally be vain and may reprove and 

rebuke her child rather because its mistakes 

wound her vanity than because she is honestly 

seeking the child's benefit. 

20 



Teustpul To-morhows 

In child nurture perfect candor and confi- 
dence between mother and children are to be 
sought beyond every other thing. Spontaneity 
in a child is dwarfed by the entrance of fear into 
his hearty and whatever he does or says he 
should not be afraid to let mother see and hear 
it. Truth exercised toward a child, the keep- 
ing of one's word absolutely, the observance of 
one's promises, and truth maintained in the 
character, in the child's world there never being 
admitted a lie — that evil growth — will go far in 
preventing a child from falsity. K"ever ought 
we to doubt our little one's word. However 
extraordinary the statement made, however im- 
probable, I prefer to accept it without hesita- 
tion if my child make it, remembering, as I do, 
that a child lives in a wonder world of fancy and 
that his vocabulary and mine are af ten different. 
To doubt a child when others are present is as 
great an offense as to give the lie to one who is 
grown up ; greater, indeed, because the child is 
defenseless and forbidden to resent the outrage. 

By every means in our power we should cul- 
tivate imagination in the little folk around us, 
for later on this gift of the skies will assist 

them in understanding God. A purely literal 
3 21 



Cheerful To-days and 

mind has always more difficulty in attaining 
to faith than one in which the ideal predomi- 
nates. jSTo sensible mother forgets that her lit- 
tle boy and girl play every day in fairyland, and 
she does not prohibit them from hearing fairy 
stories. They should hear the dear old favor- 
ites, '^Cinderella/^ "Jack the Giant Killer/' 
"Hop 0^ My Thumb/' and all the rest, and on 
the nursery shelf should stand the books of 
Hans Andersen and the brothers Grimm, and 
any other volumes of fairy lore which the 
mother may approve. Alternate these with 
Bible stories, so that ISToah, Moses, David, Dan- 
iel, Euth, Nehemiah and Esther may be fa- 
miliar names to the child, and their lives a part 
of his mental wealth, and you cannot go astray 
in beginning their education. Long before a 
child can read his mind should be well stored 
with folk lore and Biblical learning. Poetry 
comes next, and she is wise who recites to her 
children songs and hymns and ballads worth 
repeating, filled with the spirit of genuine verse, 
while the memory most readily receives and 
most strongly retains impressions. 

Obedience is a corner stone of character build- 
ing, and we cannot do without it when the chil- 

22 



Trustful To-morrows 

dren are about us, not that we may enforce our 
own will but that they may learn the first prin- 
ciples of self-government. Just here some 
mothers and fathers blunder, insisting on blind 
subservience because they ^^say so^^ instead of 
building their own authority on that of the 
Lord. A little child is not a brute beast, and 
even brute beasts are better trained when their 
obedience is gained by unvarying gentleness, in 
accordance with the laws of the road, than when 
it is compelled by severity and apparent caprice. 
A dog trained by patient love is a charming 
comrade ; subdued by arbitrary violence he is a 
cringing coward. Fortunately, few mothers in 
these enlightened days believe that a child's vn.ll 
should be broken, though here and there one 
finds a survivor of a more rigid period who ex- 
pects to have an issue and a battle royal, or sev- 
eral of these, before the poor little one learns to 
bow to the fetich of implicit obedience. 

For its own sake the family must have around 
it the safeguard of law. Within clearly defined 
law there is always liberty for the law-keeping. 
From the very beginning, by gentle inflexibility, 
the loving mother will direct the little feet 

into the straight path, and by her own example 

23 



Cheerful To-days and 

will show them how simple and sweet a thing 
is obedience. Whenever the rule of the home 
is obedience to the Heavenly Father the chil- 
dren will readily fall into docility towards the 
earthly parents. 

Our children unconsciously reproduce our 
tones, our gestures, our ways of thinking and 
speaking. Imitation, voluntary or involuntary, 
crystallizes into habit, and habit decides our 
outward semblance to the world. Take the 
table, for instance. One's behavior at table 
shows the effect of good breeding almost un- 
erringly. The gently bred person is considerate 
of others at the board, is familiar with the ac- 
cepted etiquette of the knife, fork, and spoon, 
eats in moderation and silently, and automatic- 
ally acknowledges every courtesy with an unob- 
trusive word of thanks. The boor violates 
every precept and tramples on our sense of the 
fitness of things ; yet he may be a man of kind 
impulses and sterling integrity, unfortunate in 
having in early youth mingled with those who 
were ignorant of social usages. Constant and 
unvarying politeness exercised toward children, 
as well as exacted from them, will give them an 

ease and grace of bearing which will stand them 

24 



Trustful To-morrows 

in stead when, in the future, they are no longer 
under the safe shelter of the home roof. Never 
should a voice be raised in scolding or anger in 
a home. Dr. David J. Burrell has well said of 
home that it is neither a prison nor a treadmill, 
that it is not a place for mere disciplinary proc- 
esses, that it is to be, as nearly as possibly, a 
little heaven on earth — with the spirit of heaven 
reigning in it. 

One of the happiest conditions of childhood 
exists in families where much gracious hospi- 
tality is part of the household routine. Ian 
Maclaren says, ^^The coming of guests revives 
and enriches the common life, for each has his 
own tale to tell.^^ The preparation of the guest 
chamber, of the feast, Avith the dainty extra 
touches in linen and silver and the setting forth 
of the best china, the unstinted welcome, the 
kindly farewell, are elements of value in the 
children's upbringing. In some houses com- 
pany is regarded as an intrusion, and dreaded, 
and the children never acquire the art of grace- 
ful entertaining; in others guests are greeted 
with gladness, and their pleasant presence adds 
new zest to the ordinary life, and here the chil- 
dren learn freedom and unselfishness, and taste 

25 



Cheerful To-days and 

the pure joy of making comfortable and at home 
the stranger within their gates. 

Christina Eossetti, that high priestess of song 
whose exalted verse often soars into a realm 
above our lower world and seems to touch the 
throne of God, wrote many beautiful prayers. 
One of these is especially suitable for parents 
and children: 

^^Give, I pray thee, to all children grace rever- 
ently to love their parents and lovingly to obey 
them. Teach us all that filial duty never ends 
or lessens ; and bless all parents in their children 
and children in their parents. thou in whom 
the fatherless find mercy, make all orphans, I 
beseech thee, loving and dutiful unto thee, their 
true Father. Be thy will their law, thy house 
their home, thy love their inheritance. And, 
I earnestly pray thee, comfort those who have 
lost their children, giving mothers grace to be 
comforted though they are not; and grant us 
all faith to yield our dearest treasures unto thee 
with joy and thanksgiving, that where, with 
thee, our treasure is there our hearts may be 
also. Thus may we look for and hasten unto 
the day of union with thee, and of reunion. 
Amen.'^ 

26 



Trustful To-morrows 



CHAPTEE lY 

When the Young People Grow Up 

When the young people, emerging from the 
chrysalis of childhood, put on the beautiful gar- 
ments of early maturity the house is full of gay 
life and pleasure. There is nothing else quite 
like it. The coming and going of the young 
men who are at college or in business, and who 
are eager and ardent, enjoying, aspiring, build- 
ing for the future, looking out from their plane 
of strength to the onward march of the days 
with never a fear nor a doubt, and the girls, so 
blooming, so sweet, so independent; not the 
fragile timid creatures who were once the 
poet^s and the romancer's ideal of girlhood, but 
at once refined and vigorous, trained mentally 
and physically, educated along lines parallel 
with their brothers and fitted to be good com- 
rades for good men on the road of life. Who 
can see them without enthusiasm and thankful- 
ness ? 

To the parents, not yet old, who gather about 

27 



Cheerful To-days and 

them a home bright with the charm of well-bred 
and affectionate young folk this period of their 
career is marked with a red letter. Everything 
revolves around these grown children. One 
must be allowed to go abroad to pursue a longer 
course of stud}^ — in Berlin, or Heidelberg, or 
Paris — and, though the strain has already been 
great, somehow father and mother find a way to 
help their lad that he may have the post-grad- 
uate advantages on which his soul is set. An- 
other has resolved to studv art, or to be a trained 
nurse, and, though the mother has been fondly 
anticipating the time when her daughter shall 
again be her daily companion, she interposes no 
obstacle. Edith's path is smoothed for her, and 
she goes bravely out upon it, followed by her 
mother's prayers and loving thoughts. What- 
ever the young people wish for, in the usual 
order of things, the parents endeavor to give 
them, and the only peril is that the average 
American parent shall become too self-denying 
and forget to consider what is due to himself. 

In the household which, exceptionally fav- 
ored, keeps its circle for some years unbroken 
the young people largely control the social life. 

^^We do not invite our own friends any more/' 

28 



Trustful To-morrows 

said a mother ; ^^all summer in the country and 
all winter in town we are filling the house with 
their schoolmates and college mates/' When 
school and college are over, still the young are 
in the ascendant, and too often the. mother is 
gradually crowded out of her own proper place 
— finding herself more and more an unimpor- 
tant figure, secluded in her room or seated in 
her rocking-chair in the back parlor. 

Of course, when this happens, the mother has 
herself to blame. She should not consent to 
effacement, nor in her admiration for the sons 
and daughters around her lose sight of the fact 
that she still has rights and should be honored 
and considered in the household. Once in a 
while the young people should be left to take the 
helm, and the mother, fitted out with the dainty 
wardrobe and the new shoes and gloves which 
she sometimes foregoes in favor of her girls, 
should be sent away for an outing — a journey 
with her husband or a visit to her own girlhood's 
home. From such an experience she will re- 
turn to take up the daily duties with new zest 
and something of the lost delight of youth. 

Perhaps the most important feature in home 

economv, when voung people are on the thresh- 

29 



Cheerful To-days and 

old of life, is the deciding on what they are to 
be in the busy activities of the world. Formerly 
Christian parents were prone, as they are not 
always now, to dedicate a son to the ministry, 
or a daughter to the mission field. Though, if 
too arbitrarily insisted upon, such pre-arrange- 
ment of a child's life might prove a great error 
in judgment, yet when gifts and graces accom- 
pany the development of the consecrated one it 
is quite possible that the path will be smoothed 
and the work attract the worker. But too much 
earthly ambition has occasionally entered into 
even so sacred a covenant, and the resultant 
disappointment might have been expected. 

A father may naturally desire to have his son 
take up his own business or profession, and it 
may be a sore trial to him to discover that the 
boy's bent is in another direction and that he 
cannot fit himself into the waiting niche. When 
the day arrives in which serious work must be 
undertaken, and the youth must put his own 
hand to the plough, parents may give judicious 
and loving counsel, but their wiser part, having 
done this, is to stand aside and allow freedom 
of choice to the new comer on the stage. An 

artist cannot make a successful merchant, a 

80 



Trustful To-morrows 

merchant may not be a writer of books. The 
thing to comprehend is that all true work, un- 
dertaken in the right spirit, is honorable if done 
heartily, as unto the Lord. 

Inevitable changes are foreshadowed in the 
happy days when the young people grow up. 
Lovers cross the old home threshold, and, while 
still the boys and girls seem to the parents but 
children, lo! they are finding their mates and 
beginning a new life of their own. The longer 
period of school and college work pushes mar- 
riage a little further on than was common in a 
not remote past, but so long as youth and health 
and goodness remain in the world love will rule 
it ; and it is a beautiful and appropriate conclu- 
sion to the preparatory phases of the individual 
when he becomes the wooer, or she the wooed. 

Part of a mother's obligation should be to 
make ready her girls and boys for the home 
keeping of days to come. When we indulge our 
young people in selfishness, through our own 
over fondness or over tendency to self-abnega- 
tion, we are rendering them distinctly unfit to 
be the custodians of others' happiness when they 
are beyond our hand. I do not think that a 

boy is less manly for knowing how to help his 

31 



Cheerful To-days and 

mother with her peculiarly feminine tasks. 
Why should not a boy be allowed to aid in wash- 
ing dishes, in ironing, in cooking, and in sweep- 
ing, even in mending, and in stitching on the 
machine? Acquaintance with these homely ac- 
complishments is highly valued in, for instance, 
the life of a camp, and the man who is deft and 
skilled in these arts, which make daily living 
comfortable, is popular beyond his fellows. A 
husband with some practical knowledge of 
housewifery will understand how much is de- 
manded of his wife, and will be able to sympa- 
thize with her in the pressure of her common 
routine. A boy accustomed to assist his mother 
and the girls will" not hesitate to put his shoul- 
der to the wheel when it is his wife who requires 
his timely aid. 

Equally, a girl should become familiar with 
the uses of tools, know how to drive a nail, and 
to turn a screw" ; if she live in the country, be 
quite independent of help as to harnessing her 
horse, or saddling her pony, and in every respect 
should be placed on a plane where she may be a 
comrade and friend to her brothers, and, by and 
by, everj^thing his heart can wish to him whom 

she chooses out of the whole world to be her own. 

32 



Tkustful To-horrows 

When the hour of choosing is reached the 
mother and father are very deeply concerned, 
and it is not strange that they look with yearn- 
ing and anxious eyes on those whom their chil- 
dren are henceforth to hold in the closest and 
most indissoluble relationship. Marriage is too 
solemn, too holy a thing, to be entered upon 
without a comprehension of all it involves, and 
to young people, determined upon the going out 
from the old life and into the new, it should be 
sacramental in character. Of course, parents 
may be prejudiced, and very happy unions have 
existed which were made in opposition to pa- 
rental counsel; yet when there is opposition or 
hostility is it not best for the young people to 
wait a little time before they take the irrevocable 
step ? Also, should they not remind themselves 
that, in marriage, happiness is not the only goal 
to be sought? Peopb marry that they may 
help one another, that they may complement 
one another^s deficiencies, that they may take 
part in God^s work in his world. What shall 
be the style of Christian living in the next 
thirty or forty years ? Only our young people 

can decide and answer this question. 

33 



Cheerful To-days and 



CHAPTER V 
Home Reading 

^^The pleasantest memory of my childhood/^ 
said a clever and brilliant man^ "is the picture 
which I can still see, when I close my eyes, of 
the family group on the long winter evenings. 
We lived in New Hampshire, where the cold 
begins early and lingers late, and we were some- 
times snow-bound for months, or nearly so, 
when the great drifts hemmed the homestead 
in, and we were dependent on ourselves for 
society with little help from neighbors — who, 
two or three miles away, were also in a state of 
siege. While frugality was studied, and our 
parents made the most of every dollar, there 
was a liberal expenditure for mental culture, 
and we had a goodly number of books on our 
shelves and several periodicals which brought to 
us the news of the great world and kept us in 
touch with all that went on beyond our moun- 
tain-circled borders. 

^^At evening, when the da/s work was done, 

we gathered around the lamp, and father or 

34 



Trustful To-morrows 

Jennie, my eldest sister, read aloud while our 
mother made progress with her weekly mend- 
ing and the rest of ns listened with eager in- 
terest. In a single winter we would read thus 
several volumes of history and fiction, biography 
or poetry, and the great names of literature were 
familiar on our lips/^ 

For home reading, as considered distinctly 
from individual reading, a book should be one 
of continuous sequence, its subject sufiBciently 
large to occupy successive days and weeks, or 
else it should consist of short essays, or stories, 
complete in themselves and easily finished at a 
sitting. Where people are of different ages and 
at different stages of advancement all cannot 
equally be absorbed in a volume requiring 
thoughtful attention, and to be grasped only by 
those whose previous studies have prepared 
them to handle it. For this reason, if a history 
is selected for reading aloud it should be narra- 
tive and descriptive, and popular in style rather 
than philosophical. A good plan is to keep for 
reference in a convenient place some school text- 
book to which one may turn for dates and names 
and the refreshment of recollection about bat- 
tles and other pivotal events. If poetry is read, 

35 



Cheerful To-days axd 

let it be of the ballad or lyric order ; few young 
people would be able to listen night after night, 
even if the selection were otherwise a judicious 
one, to Browning's massive and magnificent 
poem, ^'^The Eing and the Book/' But ^^Mar- 
mion/' or ^^The Lady of the Lake/' or ^^Lord of 
tlie Isles," could be read in a single evening, as 
could Kipling's "Eecessional," and a choice list 
of other fine lyrics from this wonderfully vital 
author of to-day. ^'Herve Eiel," 'The Eide 
from Ghent to Aix," Eobert Buchanan's "Ballad 
of Judas Iscariot,'^ some ringing verse of 
Whittier's or linked sweetness of Longfellow's 
would profitably fill charmed evenings beside 
the glowing hearth. 

Discussion of what is read should be encour- 
aged, and where a family undertakes one of the 
excellent prescribed courses which are to be 
found, embodying the results of scholarship and 
investigation, by all means let the listeners talk 
freely, and ask questions concerning what they 
do not fully comprehend. Even the younger 
ones by degrees find their vocabulary enlarged, 
and grow familiar with rich phrases and ornate 
words as they sit with their elders and partake 

of a feast spread for all. 

36 




'' Beside the Glowing Hearth." 



Trustful To-morrows 

In the home library there should be as of 
course a dictionary, and to this everyone should 
turn when there is uncertainty either as to the 
precise meaning of a word, its derivation, or its 
pronunciation. The best lexicons give many 
examples of the uses of words, culled from 
standard literature, and one might almost be- 
come learned who should carefully and con- 
scientiously study a dictionary. An encyclo- 
pedia is another admirable addition to home 
wealth, and it were worth while to practice a 
thousand small economies that a stately row of 
such useful volumes might be always close at 
hand. 

In the larger towns and cities, where access to 
a public library is not difficult, the family needs 
to spend less in the line of books of reference, 
but if the home be in the country they are 
indispensable. And one enjoys seeing these 
friendly companions and guides in the house- 
hold room, where they may be sought without 
ceremony, and where they may act as umpires 
in settling any mooted point which may arise. 

An atlas should be in the possession of the 

family, and the habit of consulting it should 

be encouraged. Our ideas of geography grow 
4 37 



Cheerful To-days and 

hazy and vague if we do not habitually have re- 
course to the map, and though we may stay at 
home, and seldom visit places distant from our 
own abodes, it is as well that we should know 
routes of travel, waterways of ocean and river, 
and steam communications by land, that when 
our foreign missionaries and our home mission- 
aries go to their points of labor we shall be able 
to follow and to think of them with the definite- 
ness which comes of assured knowledge. One 
cannot read the daily or weekly newspaper to- 
day without a frequent necessity of referring to 
the map, for history is making constantly, great 
problems are confronting the nation, maps are 
changing with altered political relations, and 
every indication points to the speedy coming in 
of the Kingdom of God. 

I met a woman one autumn day in an isolated 
farmhouse six miles from the great centers of 
commerce. In her whole life of nearly sixty 
vears she had not been two hundred miles from 
home, and of fashion and its follies, worldly 
splendor and its luxuries, she was entirely ig- 
norant. But on her sitting room table were 
several missionary magazines, and beside them 

just what I am now recommending, an admira- 

38 



Trustful To-morrows 

ble atlaS;, revised and brought up to date, and I 
was not surprised to discover, in this gentle and 
home-keeping matron, one who had kept pace 
with the world in its progress, who was bright, 
animated, and keen of wit and speech, and who 
both prayed for Christ^s cause and gave to it 
generousty from her store. 

In the purchase of books for a home library 
care should be exercised as to selecting the 
permanently valuable rather than the merely 
ephemeral and transient. Among those vol- 
umes which should have a place in the former 
classification, are a Life of Christ, and when one 
is in doubt to whom to apply for counsel, as to 
which of the many in the market is the best, 
the natural and sensible course is to ask the pas- 
tor of your church or the teacher of your Bible 
class. Our Lord's life is given in all fullness 
in the Scriptures; its first premonitions and 
foreshadowings are in the Old Testament, and 
the four gospels are four pictures of its beauti- 
ful and matchless progress from Bethlehem to 
Calvary. Beyond the gospels no one is actu- 
ally obliged to go for the story of the Master, 
but modern research and devout scholarship 

have thrown a clear illumination on the times 

39 



Cheerful To-days and 

of our Lord, and on the history of nations exist- 
ing and ruling when the Divine Man walked up 
and down the hills and dales of Palestine. The 
Christian should seek to be informed of all 
which reveals the circumstances of the earthly 
life of Him whose name he bears, and whose 
will is his law as he goes about the business of 
his own days. 

Shakespeare, the Bible, the Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress, with nothing else besides, would abundant- 
ly fill the minds and hearts of those who should 
make them a daily study. The almost miracu- 
lous human insight and kaleidoscopic variety 
of the great dramatist are sufficient to fill many 
libraries, and phrases from Shakespeare are 
coin current in our common conversation. The 
marvelous idyl of Bunyan is not so beloved and 
studied by our young folk as it was by their pre- 
decessors ; but one needs only to introduce Bun- 
yan in a home or a Sunday school to make him 
immediately a chief favorite, and we should not 
be at a loss when we hear reference made to 
Christian, to Hopeful, and to Faithful; to 
Christiana, her children, and Mercy; to Pru- 
dence, Piety, and Charity; Mr. Eeady-to-Halt, 

Mr. Valiant-f or-Truth, Mr. Standfast, and Old 

40 



Teustful To-morrows 

Eather Honest. The genius of John Bunyan 

is a lamp lighted for the ages^ and his spell is 

as potent now as when first his immortal work 

was produced in the grim loneliness of Bedford 

Jail. 

As for the Word of God^ it is for private study 

not only, but always and everywhere for reading 

aloud in the home. I would have it read in 

regular order, from Genesis to Eevelation, the 

family reading aloud, each two verses, from the 

father down to the wee tot whose dimpled finger 

traces the text while her lisping voice repeats 

the words after her mother. By the simple 

method of reading the Bible aloud at daily 

family prayer, we shall have a generation of 

church-going, God-fearing, Sabbath-observing 

people instead of those who are ready, in a mad 

pursuit of wealth or of pleasure, to forget God, 

and turn their backs on all which has made our 

country strong, prosperous, and free. 

41 



Cheerful To-days and 



CHAPTER VI 
Thrift for the Rainy Day 

Thrift^ a homely virtue which goes about 
on sturdy feet and makes no particular stir, is 
an eminently respectable figure though not a 
specially picturesque one. Thrift implies fore- 
sight, makes provision for the future, and is not 
resolved on the indulgence of the present at the 
expense of suffering to come. Far removed 
from the miserly quality which hoards simply 
for the sake of accumulation, thrift walks hand 
in hand with contentment, with ease of mind^ 
and with dignified self-respect. 

Pay day, however postponed, arrives as cer- 
tainly as the rising of to-morrow's sun ; and the 
thoughtlessly improvident person, who not only 
spends as he goes but spends more than he earns, 
has pay day to reckon with, and too often meets 
it unprepared. Then, around one's neck, weigh- 
ing one to the earth, debt hangs like a millstone, 

and health, strength, enthusiasm, gayety, and 

42 



Tkustful To-morrows 

joy in life vanish under its relentless pressure. 
As well may one drag a ball and chain around 
one's feet as walk through life fettered by the 
clog of debt;, which seems ever larger and less 
manageable the longer it is carried. 

Cheerful days are not compatible with obliga- 
tions greater than one's financial ability to bear, 
and as for sleep, that vanishes from the pillow of 
the reckless spendthrift whose chronic condi- 
tion is that of the debtor. There may be an 
abyss of degradation in which one is careless of 
debt and dishonor alike, but of this I am not 
speaking; for there is little difference between 
a debtor who ignores his debts and a thief who 
deliberate^ steals his neighbor's goods. The 
one is as really culpable as the other. The 
honest man or woman faced by debts which 
cannot be settled, however the situation has been 
brought into existence, must expect nights of 
misery and torture ; for at midnight and at two 
o'clock in the morning specters of fear and 
anxiety haunt the spirit and rear ghostly forms 
in the pathway of the oncoming years. 

Among the numerous causes which assist in 

bringing the wretchedness of poverty on the 

head of the bad manager the most ordinary and 

43 



Cheerful To-days and 

inevitable is a habit of living beyond one's in- 
come. Sometimes the scale of expenditure is 
too liberal^ and the whole routine of life, so to 
speak, its running schedule, needs immediate 
alteration and rearrangement. The family live 
in too large a house or in too costly a neighbor- 
hood, or are too far remote from the scene of 
their daily labors. Perhaps the father is of a 
sanguine temperament and in his happy op- 
timism is buoyant and heedless, allovring his 
wife and children every pleasure of the moment 
and living up to the full extent of his income, 
with no margin for extra expenses, so that when 
these come he is swamped, and plunged into 
difficulties from which he cannot easily extricate 
himself. In family life there are years of ex- 
traordinary costliness — as when several young 
people are growing up together and their educa- 
tion must be met, or when a prolonged season of 
illness or an accident and consequent surgical 
treatment in hospital taxes the family purse, or 
when for some good reason a long and expensive 
journey must be taken. The thrifty person 
keeps contingencies in view and has a margin 
on which to draw— a sum in bank, or other re- 
source which is available — while his opposite, 

44 



Trustful To-moerows 

having lived too generously, is forced to over- 
work or to anticipate future earnings. Both 
of these courses are unfortunate and apt to be 
disastrous. 

Excessive devotion to dress is a temptation to 
some temperaments, and, if yielded to, leads to 
an aftermath of mortification. Furs, silks, vel- 
vets, laces and jewels, the accompaniments of 
wealth, should be very moderately used by those 
whose income is limited. A young woman, for 
example, earning her own livelihood as a ste- 
nographer at fifteen dollars a week, should not 
wear a jacket of sealskin nor buy gems of price. 
Not only are these articles of elegance and 
beauty beyond the limitations of her pocket- 
book but they are in the worst possible taste and 
expose her to unkind criticism. Costly dress 
is not needful for the ordinary workingman or 
woman, who may be neat and well clad without 
extravagance, if willing to study the science of 
economical administration of money. 

Whatever the reason of financial trouble may 

be one duty is self-evident, and this is to stop 

the leak. Ascertain where it is and at once 

retrieve the position by retrenchment. Practice 

the fine art of doing without ; learn to say No to 

45 



Cheerful To-days and 

the impulse which urges you to buy what you 
cannot afford^ or which inclines you to the reck- 
lessness of buying on credit. No one should 
ever have a monthly account at a store, unless 
he has a large and steady income, for there is 
nothing more deceptive than the persuasion that 
thirty or sixty days hence one can pay with ease 
the reckoning which it is impracticable to settle 
to-day. The habit of buying for cash only is a 
check upon extravagance which acts as a useful 
brake with most people. 

A great deal of money is wasted by those who 
despise very small savings. In town, for in- 
stance, persons who could walk on their various 
errands, and to whom walking would probably 
be a benefit, take the trolley or the horse-car,, 
pay five cents for a short ride, and at the day's- 
end, or the week's end, have spent dollars in this, 
way — dollars which could have been put to a 
much better use. Young girls spend more 
money than they like to think of in candy and 
in little accessories of dress which might be dis- 
pensed with. « A penny saved is a penny earned, 
and they who look well to tiny savings will have 
large amounts to their credit in the long run. 

Thrift for the rainy day means looking out 

46 



Trustful To-morrows 

for old age. Nothing is sadder than the spec- 
tacle of one who has passed the halcyon time of 
youth and the bounds of middle age, whose 
working time is over and whose fund of vigor is 
exhausted, and to whom there has come a 
lonely period when kindred and friends are few. 
To be old and dependent on charity, or old and 
grudgingly sheltered and cared for by those 
whose conduct shows that one is in the way, is a 
very sorrowful lot. To lay up for the time of 
fragile health and of waning powers is a duty 
one should recognize before strength and cour- 
age and opportunity are gone. 

Undoubtedly it requires an effort, and bravery 
almost heroic, to retrieve one's errors, to leave 
the large and stately mansion and live in the 
cottage or to change the single dwelling for the 
narrow flat ; but of one thing most of us may be 
assured : the public is entirely without concern 
about the economies of private individuals and 
families, and one's own friends will care for one 
as truly when the manner of living is plain as 
when it is showy. Ostentation may invite 
censure, but unobtrusive simplicity wins the 
suffrages of all wise judges. IN'o friends are 

ever lost through the accidents of wealth or the 

47 



Cheerful To-days and 

reverse, and our neighbors and acquaintances 
are seldom very much occupied about the exter- 
nals of our lives — the way we dress, the houses 
we reside in, and whether we travel in the draw- 
ing-room car or modestly take our seats in the 
day coach. 

But ^^men will praise thee when thou doest 
well for thyself was said by one of old, and 
is still true in these modern davs and in the 
end of the nineteenth century. The thrifty 
worker may in time become the genial person of 
leisure ; the idler knowing nothing of prevision 
may never have the wherewithal for leisurely 
enjoyment. 

Having said this, I must add that the truest 

thrift, to put it on the very lowest plane, accords 

to the Lord his share in the profits of our trade, 

or profession, or business. Whether or not we 

adhere to the old Hebrew rule and devote the 

tenth part of our income to the Lord, we should 

systematically and gratefully appropriate some 

part, going over our assets and receipts, and 

intelligently assigning to the uses of charity and 

religion our offering In His i^ame. Whosoever 

does this, praj-ing for a blessing on the willing 

sacrifice, will never miss the satisfaction of re- 

4S 



Trustful To-morrows 

'Ward given back in rich measure ; pressed down 
and running over. 

^^There was one year/^ said a friend, ^Vhen 
John and I decided that we were too poor to give 
the Lord his tenth. Everj^thing we touched 
that year failed, and discouragement met us at 
every turn. We have never dared since, remem- 
bering that experience and its bitterness, to de- 
fraud the Lord of his share in our substance.'^ 

Over the door of one of our world-famous 
philanthropists is engraved this legend: ^^To- 
day is my ain.-^ For the rainy day not yet 
dawning in the gray east, for the year of the 
laggard step and the aching head, for the uncer- 
tainties of all the to-morrows, it is ours to pro- 
vide by conscientious and diligent thrift to-day ; 
for to-day is ^^oor ain,^^ and God^s. 

It isn't worth while to fret, dear, 

To walk as behind a hearse ; 
No matter how vexing things may be 

They easily might be worse ; 
And the time you spend complaining, 

And groaning about the load, 
Would better be given to going on 

And pressing along the road. 

I've trodden the hill myself, dear — 
'Tis the tripping tongue can preach, 

But though silence is sometimes golden, child;. 
As oft there is grace in speech— 

49 



Cheerful To-days and 

And I see, from my higher level, 
'Tis less the path than the pace 

That wearies the back, and dims the eye, 
And writes the lines on the face. 

There are vexing cares enough, dear. 

And to spare, when all is told ; 
And love must mourn its losses. 

And the cheek's soft bloom grow old ; 
But the spell of the craven spirit 

Turns blessing into curse. 
While the bold heart meets the trouble 

That easily might be worse. 

So smile at each disaster 

That will presently pass away. 
And believe a bright to-morrow 

Will follow the dark to-day. 
There's nothing gained by fretting; 

Gather your strength anew. 
And step by step go onward, dear. 

Let the skies be gray or blue. 

50 



Trusteul To-mokrows 



CHAPTEE VII 

Days of Illness 

Can days of pain and weariness, of tossing 
to and fro in fever and sinking into depths of 
weakness, be accounted days of cheer ? May we 
preserve not merely calmness, but the sweetness 
of hope and the possibility of joy, in circum- 
stances alien to everything except depression? 
When the body is on the rack may the soul 
triumph, maintaining itself in strength and 
heroism ? 

Yes, the old word of promise still abides: 

^^Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose 

mind is stayed on thee : because he trusteth in 

thee/^ The soul does not maintain itself but 

God sustains it, and the keeping is as that of the 

armed sentinel who paces to and fro before the 

gate and warns off any stealthy invader. In 

times of special need our Lord is specially near 

to his people, and so it comes to pass that many 

a sick chamber is as the house of Obed-edom in 

which the ark abode. 

51 



Cheerful To-days and 

Said one who had known keen suffering, 
^^The sickness of the last week was fine medi- 
cine; pain disintegrated tlie spirit or became 
spirituah I rose. I felt that I had given to 
God more perhaps than an angel could — had 
promised him in youth that to be a blot on this 
worlds at his command, would be acceptable. 
Constantly offer myself to continue the ob- 
scurest and loneliest thing ever heard of — with 
one proviso : his agency. Yes, love thee and all 
thou dost, while thou sheddest frost and dark- 
ness on every path of mine." 

Once the lesson has been learned of complete 
submission to the Divine will that will becomes 
a pillow for the head and a comfort for the 
heart. There is no fretfulness, no resistance; 
only serene acquiescence, and then ^^He giveth 
songs in the night." 

"I praise thee while my days go on, 

I love thee while my daj^s go on ; 

Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost. 
With emptied arms and treasure lost, 

I thank thee while my days go on." 

I shall never forget the look of ecstasy on the 
worn, sweet, illumined countenance of a beloved 

one who was passing through deep waters, whose 

52 



Trustful To-morrows 

fragile form was rent with anguish, and who 
knew, morning by morning, that relentlessly 
and inevitably death was encroaching upon life. 
I entered her chamber in the early dawn; she 
greeted me with her rare and beautiful smile. 
"Ah V' she said, "my Lord has so revealed him- 
self to me that I have no fear, no solicitude, 
nothing but gladness in waiting for him. I 
can trust him for everything, even for the lit- 
tle children I am leaving to be fatherless and 
motherless in the world.^' Days and weeks 
wore slowly on before the silver cord was 
loosed, but the rapture only deepened as the 
earthly faded and the heavenly drew near. To 
all who came within her sphere that room of 
mortal agony was bright with a light which fell 
from the jasper walls. 

It is not alone when death is imminent that 
the dear Lord can give us supremacy over pain. 
To one of his children it has been appointed to 
dwell for many years under the shadow of a 
malady which binds her to her couch, hand and 
foot. She lies there helpless as a log, lifted, 
turned, carried sometimes to another room, 
never able to perform one bodily office for hus- 
band or child ; always being more or less under 
5 53 



Cheerful To-days and 

the bondage of a grinding poignant pain. 
Tliere are hard days, and, mercifully, there are 
easy days, but through them all the invalid's 
courage and cheer is the radiant fact which 
keeps the home a cheerful habitation and not a 
gloomy cell. A friend coming in is welcomed 
with blithe word and happy look; the husband 
hears never a murmur ; the son, through child- 
hood, youth, and in early manhood, has had his 
mother for confidante and counselor, his educa- 
tion, his profession, his plans all part of her 
thought and part of her work, intelligently 
shared as to all that has concerned his develop- 
ment. The house, smoothly carried on in its 
domestic routine, has known her guiding brain 
if not her guiding hand, and her years of illness 
have been truly years of glory and victory. 

Such an experience would be impossible with- 
out Christian faith, for it is forever true that 

"The healing of the seamless dress • 

Is by our beds of pain ; 
We touch Him in life's throng and press, 

And we are whole again." 

William Law, whose insight was so remark- 
able, writing in the last century said, pithily: 

^^If a man do not believe that all the world is as 

54 



Trustful To-morrows 

God^s family^ where nothing happens by chance 
but all is guided and directed by the care and 
providence of a Being that is all love and good- 
ness to his creatures, if a man do not believe 
this from his heart, he cannot be said truly 
to believe in God. And yet he that has this 
faith has faith enough to overcome the world 
and always be thankful to God. For he that 
believes that everything happens to him for the 
best cannot possibly complain for the want of 
something that is better. If therefore you live 
in murmurings and complaints, accusing all the 
accidents of life, it is not because you are a weak, 
infirm creature, but it is because you want the 
first principle of religion, a right belief in God. 
It is certain that, whatever seeming calamity 
happens to you, if you thank and praise God for 
it you turn it into a blessing. Could you, there- 
fore, work miracles you could not do more for 
yourself than by this thankful spirit, for it heals 
with a word speaking, and turns all that it 
touches into happiness.^^ 

We should not overlook the great goodness 
of God which ordains that, for most of us, days 
of illness are episodes in the midst of days of 

health and activity. They interrupt us in our 

55 



Cheerful To-days and 

career, and for awhile we are laid aside, but they 
pass, and the tide which ebbed flows in again 
and we are once more able to go to the office or 
the shop, to sit at the head of the table, to engage 
in the multitudinous affairs of our lives. Dur- 
ing the period of inaction it is well for us if we 
have been able to lay everything in the kind 
hands of God, to trust everything to him, sure 
that he will not appoint us one bitter drop too 
much. 

The real test comes to us when not only is our 
illness the occasion of pain to us personally, but 
when, if prolonged, it brings great weariness to 
our caretakers and perhaps entails privation 
upon them, in the loss of means which the bread- 
winner earns when in health. To feel that 
there is no time to be ill is to know a very keen, 
knife-like thrust of anguish. Yet here too the 
childlike heart will breathe ^^Thy will be done,'' 
and will repose in confidence on the pledge that 
'^all things work together for good to those who 
love God.'' 

We must sometimes be ready to cry, 

"But if this weariness hath come 

A present from on high, 
Teach me to find the hidden wealth 

That in its depths may lie." 
56 



Trustful To-morrows 

One of the most difficult tasks and heaviest 
burdens ever laid upon a believing soul is to see 
the suffering of little children. When pain 
comes to an infant too young to tell what hurts 
and where the hurt is^ when its arresting pres- 
ence stops the mirth of the growing boy and 
shuts down like a heavy curtain on the bright- 
ness of the young girl^ we^ who can only min- 
ister, who cannot avert the ill, nor take it away 
and bear it ourselves, find it terribly hard to be 
cheerful and composed. Childhood ought to be 
so free from sickness, so full of elasticity and 
delight, that suffering laid upon its shoulders 
appears to us as an anachronism. Happily, 
children accept without murmuring whatever 
the day brings them, and for that very reason 
they recover more rapidly from any transient 
malady than their elders do. And for our chil- 
dren as for ourselves, in our days of the darkness 
and of the light, we must ask grace for the day 
and believe and hope and wait, sure that in the 
hottest furnace there will walk with us One like 
unto the Son of God. 

"The folded hands seem idle. 

If folded at His word 
'Tis a holy service, trust me, 

In obedience to the Lord." 
57 



Cheerful To-days and 

"Among so many can he care? 
Can special love be everywhere? 
A myriad homes, a myriad ways, 
And God's eye over every place? 
I asked. My soul bethought of this : 
In that same very place of his 
Where he hath put and keepeth you 
God hath no other thing to do." 

Invalids frequently look back to convalescence 
as a time of peculiar blessedness. The differ- 
ence between convalescence and extreme illness 
in the initiative is often so very slight that a 
physician or a nurse only can state, with any- 
thing like assurance, whether the tide has really 
turned or whether it is still ebbing out toward 
eternity. If it has turned, and, ever so slowly, 
life is flowing back, then there may be for a 
while no improvement sufficiently marked to be 
admitted as such by the unprofessional eye. In 
convalescence one sometimes measures progress 
by weeks, when by days there is apparently none 
to mark. Scanning the past seven days or four- 
teen days there is noted an increase of strength, 
ability to take more nourishment, less irritation 
of nerves, less sensitive quivering at a slight 
noise, presently a little more desire to know 
what is going on, and soon a wish to see inquir- 
ing friends. This last step must be taken with 

58 



Trustful To-morrows 

great caution, and visitors from the world out- 
side accepted with wise discrimination, while in 
the hand to hand conflict between vitality and 
morbid tendency the forces of the former are 
gaining the ascendant. 

In the early stages of convalescence a patient 
requires very tender and judicious care. There 
must be no relaxation of vigilance, no intermis- 
sion of the sentries on guard, for a small indis- 
cretion, an unmeant blunder, may occasion that 
dreaded condition of affairs, a relapse; a thing 
to be scrupulously avoided, since the victim has 
not now the reserves on which to draw, as he had 
when originally taken ill. In convalescence one 
must make haste slowly. Tide over by every 
possible means that phase of returning health 
when even a statesman, in his invalid weakness, 
may behave like a spoiled baby. Is it never 
coming back, the old independence of action, 
the old swiftness of thought, the old exhilara- 
tion in work, and rapture in being alive ? Per- 
haps the despair and depression express them- 
selves in a curtness or brusqueness alien to the 
manner of the person in health, but pardoned by 
attendants and friends who know that it is 

merely incidental to weakness, and that it will 

59 



Cheerful To-days and 

be transient. Now, when the room is flooded 
with sunshine and radiant with flowers, when a 
child's foot is allowed to cross the threshold, and 
a child's sweet voice is heard beside the bed, the 
crossness, for it is just that, passes away, and 
the invalid begins to enjoy the returning days, 
each laden for him or her with new gifts and 
graces. 

What gratitude we owe to that minister of 
love the trained nurse, a product of nineteenth 
century wisdom. There have always been 
women described as born nurses; women with 
cool hands, deft and skillful, and with that 
faculty for care-taking which is brought to its 
highest water-mark under the discipline of a 
nurses' school. But our modern nurse is for- 
tunate in being able to economize her own 
strength ; she is not disturbed by the emotional 
strain which wears on wife and mother; she is 
the doctor's obedient instrument, and in her best 
estate becomes the prized and honored friend of 
the family. 

In the old days God sent his angels oft 

To men in threshing-floors, to women pressed 

With daily tasks ; they came to tent and croft, 
And whispered words of blessing and of rest. 

60 



Trustful To-moerows 

Not mine to guess what shape those angels wore, 
Nor in what voice they spoke, nor with what grace 

They brought the dear love down that evermore 
Makes lowliest souls its best abiding-place. 

But in these days I know my angels well ; 

They brush my garments on the common way, 
They take my hand, and very softly tell 

Some bit of comfort in the waning day. 
And though their angel names I do not ken, 

Though in their faces human love I read, 
They are God-given to this world of men, 

God-sent to bless it in its hours of need. 

Child, mother, dearest wife, brave hearts that take 
The rough and bitter cross, and help me bear 

Its heavy weight when strength is like to break, 
God bless you all, our angels unaware ! 

61 



Cheerful To-days and 



CHAPTER VIII 
Comfort in Sorrow 

"Into each life some rain must fall." 

Sorrow sooner or later visits every one. It 
may be of one or another variety ; it may be grief 
over the dead or distress over the living. A 
child gone astray is a far greater source of sor- 
row than a child asleep in the cemetery. The 
trouble which one has over the living is never 
finished ; it rises up with one at morning, accom- 
panies him all day, and lies down with him at 
night. What form it shall next take depends 
on so many possible combinations of temptation 
or opportunity that they who endure this special 
form of trial seldom feel secure; they are in 
dread of some new feature, some denouement 
worse than the last. 

^^When my darling boy died after a few hours 

of frightful illness I was prostrated in the very 

dust/^ said a mother. "My whole world lay 

about me in ruins. The narrow grave in which 

we laid him blotted the sunshine from our sky, 

and I remember three lines of poetry which I 

62 



Trustful To-morrows 

read that mournful summer, and which kept 
recurring to me, 

*His part in all the pomp that fills 
The circuit of the summer hills 
Is that his grave is green.* 

For years I rejected consolation, and turned my 
back on every solace ; I was angry with God, 
who had dared to snatch away my son. That 
was the worst part of it — the hard, cold, bitter 
spot in my heart, and the sense of absence from 
my Heavenly Father. I have learned now that 
there are griefs to which mine was nothing. 

"My friend, whose son and mine were school- 
mates, has spent months in trying to free him 
from a vile accusation. She believes him to be 
innocent, as I do, but around his feet a network 
of incriminating circumstantial evidence has 
been woven, and he is in prison, his name de- 
famed, his home broken up, his career ruined, 
and apparently there is no way out of the diffi- 
culty. The only thing which buoys that mother 
up is her firm belief that her boy is innocent; 
there are mothers who have no reason for such 
a trust when their sons are accused. I have 
reached a place where I can say ^Thank God for 

my darling in heaven V ^^ 

63 



Cheerful To-days and 

Of whatever nature our particular grief may 
be there is balm for it in the Gilead of- God's 
great dispensary. The sad-faced woman whom 
I met carrying roses to lay on a mound in that 
beautiful God's acre at Savannah, where the 
weird gray moss hangs from the trees and the 
jasmine lights its golden star above the silent 
sleepers, smiled in my face as she said, "Bobbie 
never had a moment to rest before. He can rest 
now.'^ Mrs. Browning was in the right when 
she interpreted the feeling of thousands who are 
bereaved, 

"Well done of God to halve the lot. 
And give her all the sweetness ; 

To us, the empty room and cot ; 
To her, the heaven's completeness." 

If we can but be unselfish our grief for the 
dead is cheated of its sting ; and in our grief for 
the living there is usually at least one mitiga- 
tion, that of hope for a brighter day. "It is 
better farther on,'' we sing, and take courage. 

A man honored and beloved by all his friends 
died suddenly some years ago in a New York 
hospital. He had been in receipt of an ample 
salary and had few personal extravagances. 

There seemed no reason why he should die in 

64 



Trustful To-morrows 

debt, yet, when he was gone, it was discovered 
that to the charity of friends and acquaintances 
he must owe the six feet of earth in which he 
was to lie. No one could understand the situ- 
ation or explain it, but after a while the fact 
transpired that for years he had been support- 
ing a relative, a man of education and native 
refinement who had taken to drink, who had 
fallen lower and lower until all kinsmen but this 
one had abandoned him, who had finally degen- 
erated into a social outcast and a tramp. The 
drain on the man's resources had been con- 
stant, and he had deprived himself of almost 
everything that he might assist his weaker 
brother, and finally he had dropped down be- 
neath a load too heavy for him to bear. This 
was a day by day torture, so cheerfully endured 
that its very existence had not been suspected. 

In sorrow, whatever it be, the natural tem- 
per of the mind must be considered; its power 
of reaction from the first despair, and its elas- 
ticity or its sluggishness. A mercurial person 
resists melancholy, and fights against it. A per- 
fectly well and vigorous person has in physical 
strength an armor against morbid grief. Com- 
fort comes to some of us in every pulsation of 

65 



Cheerful To-days and 

the heart, in every waft of the breeze, in every 
sunset cloud and blooming flower. Others are 
obstinately sorrowful, and, against their own 
will, find their hearts as heavy as lead — receiv- 
ing comfort only from time, which blunts the 
edge of the sharpest wounds. 

Duty, however, points to unselfishness in sor- 
row. No matter how desperate the situation, 
how forlorn the day, we have no right to include 
in our own misery those we meet, strangers, or 
visitors, or children. For the sake of others we 
must arise and eat bread, and go about our daily 
work and make the most of what still remains. 
To gather up the fragments that nothing may 
be lost is still the divine injunction, and it is 
incumbent on us all. 

The effort to look and speak cheerfully, and 

the endeavor to make others happy, will usually 

be successful in bringing relief to our own 

bosoms. The getting out of self is absolutely 

essential. I shall always remember a Christian 

gentlewoman who came on the appointed day 

of its meeting to a board in which she held an 

important office. Only three days had elapsed 

since there had been a funeral at her home, and 

we had followed to Greenwood the form of her 

66 



Trustful To-morrows 

son, laid low in his early maturity. ^^The Lord's 
work must be done/' she said, and calmly, with- 
out wavering and without delay, took up what 
he had appointed her. 

^^Blessed are they that mourn : for they shall 
be comforted,'' said the Master, and somehow, 
at the core of the deepest desolation, there is a 
honey of sweetness in the thought of that pledge 
of blessing. For by whom are we to be com- 
forted ? By no human agency alone ; if by hu- 
man means, they are but channels through 
which our God will move. In our extremity the 
compassionate Jesus will himself loose our 
bonds and give us freedom and support. 

One of the dearest elderly women I ever knew 
after the decease of an idolized daughter found 
alleviation of her loneliness in taking up the 
daughter's work. The young lady had been un- 
tiring in her devotion to an orphanage — ^visiting 
it frequently, teaching classes of the little ones, 
raising money for its endowment, and person- 
ally placing the children in homes when they 
were ready to leave the fostering care of the in- 
stitution. Everything the daughter had done, 
in her plenitude of youth and fullness of vigor, 

the mother did in her lessened strength and 

67 



Cheerful To-days and 

greater age, and her gentle face and slender fig- 
ure in its trailing robes of black were soon 
familiar in haunts which they had previously 
not known. In her loving ministries she was 
abundantly blessed, and there came to her such 
a sense of companionship with the one who was 
gone as she could have found in no other way. 

A certain household where sons were as olive 
plants around the table had one little daughter, 
who was so petted and prized and made much 
of that she was almost the corner stone of the 
domestic edifice. Blanche was the darling of 
parents and brothers, the youngest of the flock, 
a lovely girl whose future loomed up in un- 
clouded splendor. She could ride, swim, drive, 
hold her own in any sport and in any study, and 
her beauty was like that of an unfolding flower. 
No expense was spared for Blanche, and she had 
not an unfulfilled wish in the world. 

Suddenly as if lightning had flashed from a 
clear sky a fatal sickness smote her, and she was 
not, for God had taken her. 

"There is no flock, however watched and tended, 

But one dead lamb is there ; 
There is no household, howsoe'er defended, 

But has one vacant chair.'' 

68 







*'One Little Daughter/ 



Tkustful To-morrows 

Yery blank was the empty space, very silent 
the house, very sweeping the sorrow, in the home 
from which Blanche had been snatched. What 
did the parents do ? Just this. As soon as they 
could rally from the shock and gather them- 
selves together they computed the amount they 
had spent each year for Blanche, the amount 
they would probably have spent in the years of 
her early womanhood, and they consecrated that 
sum to the education of another girl of her age, 
and to the salary of a missionary woman in a 
foreign station where Blanche was interested. 
And so they kept her little candle burning, , 
though they sat in the dark. 

A sorrow for some of us is found in the open- 
ing of our eyes to our own limitations. There 
was a golden day when we felt that defeat and 
retreat were terms we could never understand. 
Our plans were made for success. With failure 
we should never have aught to do. But the 
onward march has seen us lagging in the rear, 
where we anticipated pushing forward in the 
van. We are aware that we cannot keep the 
pace that our contemporaries have taken; we 
must instead walk softly, and, not able to do all 

we would, we must do what we can. In this 
6 69 



Cheerful To-days and 

condition let us cease to fret, for even here there 
is comfort in the thought that ^^they also serve 
who only stand and wait.'^ As in the old days 
an equal division of spoil was the portion of 
those who tarried by the stuff as of those who 
went to the field and fought the foe, so, to-day, 
God's rewards are distributed impartially to all 
who do his will, whether in the open contest or 
in the quiet of the curtained room. 

How rich a comfort have those derived who, 
being blessed by God with large means, have 
consecrated them to the uses of humanity, link- 
ing the college, the hospital bed, the gymnasium, 
the nurses' home, or the library, with the name 
of some one who has a new Christ-given name 
in the Jerusalem that is above. The broad uni- 
versity, forever dispensing liberal culture and 
scientific knowledge to eager youth, and giving 
them educational opportunities in their poverty 
which the millionaire's purse were scarcely large 
enough to buy, is a white stone erected for the 
love of a son gone home to the better land and 
sorely missed here. Every small crippled child 
treated in a certain hospital bed owes its relief 
and cure to the undying sorrow of a mother 

from whose arms one summer day two bonny lit- 

70 



Trustful To-horrows 

tie ones slipped away. Broken-hearted parents 
saw their splendid boy close his eyes on the 
lights of earth and their own way grew so black 
that they groped in it as if blind, till a star arose 
to show them the path and they heard a voice 
saying, "I [who have taken him] will come 
again, and receive yon unto myself/^ The fruit 
of that honr is a superb gymnasium for the 
Young Men's Christian Association of which 
their son was a member, and so long as happy- 
hearted young people shall enjoy its benefits it 
will be a testimony of one Christ-like method of 
finding comfort in sorrow, the peace under the 
deep sea, though the billows are in agitation 
above. 

If Christ Weee Here To-night 

If Christ were here to-night and saw me tired, 
And half afraid another step to take, 

I think he'd know the thing my heart desired, 
And ease that heart of all its throbbing ache. 

If Christ were here, in this dull room of mine 
That gathers up so many shadows dim, 

I am quite sure its narrow space would shine, 
And kindle into glory around him. 

If Christ were here I might not pray so long: 
My prayer would have such little way to go ; 

'T would break into a burst of happy song. 
So would my joy and gladness overflow. 

71 



Cheerful To-days and 

If Christ were here to-night I'd touch the hem 
Of his fair, seamless robe, and stand complete 

In wholeness and in whiteness ; I, who stem 
Such waves of pain to kneel at his dear feet. 

If Christ were here to-night I'd tell him all 
The load I carry for the ones I love — 

The blinded ones, who grope and faint and fall. 
Following false guides, nor seeking Christ above. 

If Christ were here! Ah, faithless soul and weak, 
Is not the Master ever close to thee? 

Deaf is thine ear, that can'st not hear him speak ; 
Dim is thine eye, his face that can not see. 

Thy Christ is here, and never far away ; 

He entered with thee when thou camest in ; 
His strength was thine through all the busy day : 

He knew thy need, he kept thee pure from sin. 

"Thy blessed Christ is in thy little room ; 

Nay, more — the Christ himself is in thy heart; 
Fear not ; the dawn will scatter darkest gloom, 

And heaven will be of thy rich life a part. 

72 



Trustful To-morrows 



CHAPTEE IX 

Looking Forward 

From the hour when the pilgrimage begins 
there is a continual looking forward^ a reaching 
out of powers and endeavors to a goal ever 
beckoning the ardent soul. Indeed before the 
human being takes his place in the great world 
armies there is an intense and sacred expecta- 
tion clinging to him^ inwoven in the very fibers 
of his mental and physical consciousness. In 
one most important though altogether hidden 
period of existence^ the pre-natal^ the little child 
of God who is presently to put on immortality 
is the object of devout and loving anticipation 
in the home^ and to one person^ the mother^ is a 
wonder and a joy in the months of looking for- 
ward while the babe in her womb is in sanctu- 
ary. ' ISTever is a woman so hallowed^ so lifted 
above the ordinary plane^ so beautiful, as when, 
the glory of her coming motherhood upon her, 
she holds herself away and apart from every de- 
basing thought, keeps herself serene and pure, 

for the sake of the child whom she feels but can- 

73 



Cheerful To-days and 

not see. Keeps herself ? Nay, rather, in these 
long, hushed, waiting days she is kept, trusting 
in God, from evil thoughts and from fear, from 
petty irritations and flurries of anger, while she 
is often rapt in meditation and is wistful that 
her divine Friend and Master may enter into 
her home and abide with her there. For in 
these days of looking forward the mother too is 
in sanctuar}^, sheltered by the tender watching 
angels, hearing sj^mphonies of heaven, and com- 
muning much with the Most High. 

Strange, when the anticipation is so sweet 
and the reality so blessed, that there should ever 
be reluctant maternity, that the days when the 
mother is brooding over her nursery should ever 
be aught but cheerful ! 

Mothers have the monopoly of sacred joy in 
the dear looking forward, wistful, wondering, 
waiting till the sacred hour of birth arrives, and 
they greet their new darling. Nothing else in 
the world is like this. In a recently published 
autobiography there is a very touching passage 
in which a wife, seeing her husband's life drift- 
ing out day by day and fearing he might go be- 
fore he saw his unborn child, a thing which 
actuall}^ happened, often stra3^ed into a little 



Tkustful To-morrows 

room in the Pitti Palace in Florence where 
hung a famous picture of the Visitation. Lone- 
ly, a stranger in a strange land with a great 
anguish staring her in the face, Margaret Oli- 
phant said, ^^t seemed to do me good to go and 
look at these two women, the tender old Eliza- 
beth, and Mary with all the awe of her coming 
motherhood upon her. I had little thought of 
all that was to happen to me before my child 
came, but I had no woman to go to, to be com- 
forted, except these two.^^ This is a touching 
revelation of the way art may prove God's 
messenger, in a crisis, just as ISTature so often 
does. All the rose-strewn path of childhood is 
for mothers a looking forward, from the first 
toddling steps to the going to school, then on- 
ward to the choosing of a profession. The pres- 
ent is but the foothold by which the mother 
climbs to the next level in advance. 

But we look forward in many other fields. 
Without this quality, which acts as a saving salt, 
we might stagnate. Things would not be worth 
while; for nobody lives only for food and rai- 
ment, and for the festivity of the hour alone, if 
he or she possesses the instincts which are the 

birthright of an immortal being. ^^We eat and 

75 



Cheerful To-days and 

drink and to-morrow we die'' is the hopeless out- 
cry of the skeptic who^ with Omar Khayyam, 
sees in the sky only an inverted bowl under 
which the generations creep and crawl to noth- 
ingness. ISTot so with those who feel the power 
of the world to come pressing them round in this 
time of preparation. For them the looking for- 
ward always crosses the river and mounts the 
heights on the other side. 

Is there anything in literature more winsome 
and charming than the looking forward of Mar- 
garet Ogilvy and her son, told in the inimitable 
manner of one of our greatest men of genius : 

^^Mother, the little girl in my story wears a 
magenta frock and a white pinafore.'' 

^^You minded that ! But I'm thinking it 
wasna a lassie in a pinafore you saw in the long 
parks of Kinnordy, it was just a gey done auld 
woman." 

^^It was a lassie in a pinafore, mother, when 
she was far away, but when she came near it was 
a gey done auld woman." 

^^And a fell ugly one !" 

^^The most beautiful one I shall ever see !" 

^^I wonder to hear you say it. Look at my 

wrinkled auld face." 

76 



Trustful To-morrows 

^^It is the sweetest face in all the world/^ 

"See how the rings drop oflE my poor wasted 
finger/^ 

"There will always be some one nigh, mother, 
to put them on again/^ 

"Ay will there ! Well I know it. Do yon 
mind how when you were but a bairn you used 
to say, ^Wait till I'm a man, and you'll never 
have a reason for greeting again' ? 

"You used to coming running into the house 
to say, ^There's a proud dame going down the 
Marywell brae in a cloak that is black on one 
side and white on the other ; wait till I'm a man 
and you'll have one the very same/ And when 
I lay on gey hard beds you said, ^When I'm a 
man you'll lie on feathers.' You saw nothing 
bonny, you never heard of my setting my heart 
on anything, but what you flung up your head 
and cried, ^Wait till I'm a man.' You fair 
shamed me before the neighbors; and yet I was 
windy, too. And now it has all come true like 
a dream. I can call to mind not one little thing 
I ettled for in my lusty days that hasna been put 
into my hands in my auld age." 

Was there not to the son of Margaret Ogilvy 

an unutterable gratitude of heart that his look- 

77 



Cheerful To-days and 

ing forward for his beloved mother's welfare 
had been so fulfilled^ that he had been able to 
do for her in manhood what the leal laddie had 
planned in childish days ? 

Most husbands and wives must begin their 
nnited partnership in the day of small things. 
They have their fortunes to make, and so they 
set out, if they are sensible, in the unpretending 
little home with the very simple furnishing, and 
with no attempt at gorgeous draperies, costly 
rugs, or lavish display. Their careful econo- 
mies, their conscientious use of every dollar, their 
investing for a future day, are noble and honor- 
able, and yet more : they are satisfying and de- 
lightful. What pleasure of the millionaire in 
buying the picture he fancies in a gallery, draw- 
ing his check, and thinking no more about it, 
can for a moment compare with the sense of 
achievement, of victory gained, which is the 
crowning joy of a young couple who for a year 
have been saving up to secure a coveted painting 
for their walls ? How often have they strolled 
past the dealer's shop and gazed into his win- 
dow ! How their hearts went down, down, into 
the depths when once that window failed to hold 

their picture — when another had replaced it. 

78 



Trustful To-morrows 

Trembling and disturbed they ventured in, to 
ask whether it had been bought and sent away ; 
and how hope revived when they saw it still 
within their grasp, if only the little sums put by 
would mount up faster. Their children in days 
to come will wonder why papa and mamma, 
lovers yet, so often sit hand in hand on the sofa 
and look at the old picture brought home when 
the eldest born was a baby. Ah! they cannot 
fathom what love and faith and hope meant to 
their parents in the cheery days when they 
worked together for their home building and 
money was scarce. 

Above all other serviceable gifts is a capacity 
for looking forward when one meets reverses. 
The ship is going on under full sail, and every- 
thing is favorable for a successful voyage, when, 
lo ! a cloud appears on the horizon, a gale rises, 
the storm gathers and breaks. Our shores are 
strewn with the wreckage of vessels that were 
only yesterday faring on bravely toward their 
desired haven. In some cases the wreck is final ; 
the sailor never tries to make another port. In 
others, the mariner with steady ej^e and splen- 
did courage builds a boat — perhaps of drift- 
wood, if he can do no more — runs up a rag of 

79 



Cheerful To-days and 

canvas, looks aloft for help and goes on to re- 
trieve every disaster and come gallantly home at 
last. Blessed is the disposition in vv^hich there 
is the ability to rebound ; which is not crushed 
by calamity, but takes its courage in both hands 
and goes on. 

^^Speak unto the children of Israel, that they 
go forward/' came ringing from the skies, when 
the mountains and the desert and the sea were 
all presenting obstacles in the path of their 
progress. Since he who watcheth Israel neither 
slumbers nor sleeps, why should we not always 
listen for that command and not only look, but 

go, forward through all the days ? ^ 

80 



Trustful To-morrows 



CHAPTER X 

Music at Home 

Forty years ago, here in America, our 
notions of music were very primitive. A piano 
was considered part of the essential furnishings 
of a comfortable home, and one or two of the 
daughters of the household took music lessons 
as a matter of course. Women whose hair is 
silvered and who have put on the amplitude of 
later middle life remember what a trial those 
music lessons were, recall the practicing which 
held them rigidly fast while their brothers were 
out on the hills playing ball or skating over the 
frozen lake. The half hours and the hours were 
scrupulously exacted, careful aunts and mothers 
watching the clock when the young girl herself 
had not a conscience to be trusted, and by de- 
grees the book of exercises was somehow fin- 
ished, the earliest novitiate was passed, and the 
performer took pieces — battles, marches, polkas, 
and variations. Once in a while a girl with real 
musical taste and decided talent persevered and 

became a musician, but as a rule the hardly-won 

81 



Cheerful To-days and 

skill was soon lost, laid aside as a useless tool, 
soon rusted, when marriage or maturity arrived. 
One good thing resulted from the somewhat 
crude efforts of that bygone period, and that 
was a great deal of innocent sociability and 
gayety in home and neighborhood life. There 
was in every company a young woman who could 
play. Frequently there were several young 
women whose playing was agreeable, and the 
piano on long winter evenings was the natural 
rallying center of the domestic circle. Friends 
happened in, and there was singing. A little 
music enlivened the routine of work. Father 
enjoyed it, lying back in his easy chair with the 
weekly paper, forgotten, on his lap. Mother 
felt great pride in her daughter's accomplish- 
ment; it meant poetry and brightness and 
beauty to her, redeeming her years from the 
gradual narrowing in of their interests. If a 
brother was tempted away from home, lured by 
evil associates, apt to go astray, there was always 
the resource of music to keep him in safe 
bounds ; his sister and his friends' sisters could 
weave around him their innocent spells and 
make home so attractive that the magic of vice 

fell away and lost its malevolent power. Pass- 

82 



Trustful To-]\roRROWs 

ing down a village street one heard the tinkle of 
the ^^four and twenty black slaves and the four 
and twenty white" in every parlor^ and a new 
song, a new arrangement of a motive, was the 
theme of conversation among maidens fair as 
they matched worsteds and silks and exchanged 
dress patterns. 

Who fancies that lessons for a year or two are 
now sufficient to turn out a skilled musician? 
Who would be satisfied with the cursory ac- 
quaintance and slovenly technique of those curi- 
ously simple days ? We are now aware that art 
is a jealous mistress, that he or she who would 
become proficient at her shrine must lead a 
laborious life and give her utmost devotion. To 
play even fairly well one must sacrifice many 
other advantages, and few people are contented, 
in our more advanced condition of scientific 
knowledge, in our more enlightened view point 
of criticism and intelligence, to play at all unless 
they can play well. 

The result is admirable in one aspect. Many 

girls have time to cultivate their physical health, 

have opportunity for outdoor air and recreation, 

who once spent their morning or their afternoon 

hours, when freed from school, in a wrestle with 

83 



Cheerful To-days and 

scales and finger exercises. But something has 
gone from home^ and its quiet enjoyment, which 
might well come back. There is a vanished joy. 

May we not plead for a middle course, for 
the use of facility, even if it be not of the very 
highest, and for the return of simple music as a 
part of our everyday life ? 

jSTothing is more refreshing than a half hour 
of song when the work of the day is over. For 
the family to gather at the close of the evening 
and sing the dear old favorites, such as ^^ Abide 
with me,^^ ^'^Lead, kindly Light,^^ and ^^Sun of 
my soul, thou Saviour dear,^^ is to send all to 
rest with a benediction. There are popular 
melodies, rollicking college songs, tender old 
ballads, which have a melod}^ and grace of their 
own, and which make a swift and tender appeal 
to the sentiments of faith, love, and loyalty. 
Our patriotic and martial strains should be 
sung often in every home, and school, and 
church. While, so far as we can, we should seek 
the best we should not scorn second-best in our 
own performances, if that is all which lies 
within our reach. 

I would have girls learn, what is after all not 

so simple a thing as it sounds, the accomplish- 

84 



Trustful To-morrows 

ment of playing an accurate accompaniment to 
the songs of another. A good accompanist is a 
social benefactress, and on occasion she may 
make her skill pecuniarily profitable. Then, 
too, I would have all pla3^ers assiduously culti- 
vate a musical memory, so that they may be set 
free from the bondage of notes, and I would also 
like them to be swift and sure sight readers, so 
that at an instant's call they could play a score 
and relieve the embarrassment of any occasion 
where an expected performer had fallen out of 
line. 

I am not speaking here of the subtle and sweet 
interpretations of the great masters, nor of those 
who have learned to play as professionals do. I 
am asking only that as a contribution to the 
gayety of life we may still have our home per- 
formers. 

There is a lovely poem of Frances Eidley 
Havergal which illustrates what I mean : 

**Sing to the little children 

And they will listen well, 
Sing grand and holy music, 

For they can feel its spell. 

« 4e * 4e 4: 

7 85 



Cheerful To-days and 

"I remember, late one evening, 

How the music stopped, for, hark ! 
Charlie's nursery door was open, 

He was calling in the dark. 
*0, no ! 1 am not frightened. 

And I do not want a light ; 
But I cannot sleep for thinking 

Of the song you sang last night. 
Something about a *'valley" 

And "make rough places plain," 
And, "Comfort ye," so beautiful ! 

O, sing it me again.' 

"Sing in the deepening twilight 

When the shadow of eve is nigh, 
And the purple and golden pinions 

Fold o'er the western sky. 
Sing in the silver silence 

While the first moonbeams fall ; 
So shall your power be greater 

Over the hearts of all. 
Sing till you bear them with you 

Into a holy calm, 
And the sacred tones have scattered 

Manna and myrrh and balm. 

**Sing that your song may gladden ; 

Sing like the happy rills 
Leaping in sparkling blessing, 

Fresh from the breezy hills. 
Sing that your song may silence 

The folly and the jest. 
And the 'idle word' be banished 

As an unwelcome guest. 
Sing that your song may echo 

After the strain is past — 
A link of the love-wrought cable 

That holds some vessel fast. 
80 






1 'f 




Trustful To-morrows 

"Sing to the tired and anxious ; 

It is yours to fling a ray, 
Passing indeed, but cheering, 

Across the rugged way. 

"When you long to bear the message 

Home to some troubled breast. 
Then sing with loving fervor, 

*Come unto Me and rest !' 
Or, would you whisper comfort 

When words bring no relief, 
Sing how 'He was despised, 

Acquainted with our grief,' 
And aided by His blessing 

The song may win its way 
Where speech had no admittance. 

And change its night to day." 

When the sweet singer who wrote these stan- 
zas was lying in the hush of her last illness she 
was heard to whisper^ ^^Splendid to be so near 
the gates of heaven !'^ ^^So beautiful to go V^ 
With her failing voiee^ hardly more than a sigh, 
she breathed forth one of her best loved hymns, 
^^Jesus, I will trust thee/^ to a tune of her own 
composing. 

^^Then/^ said her sister, ^^she looked up stead- 
fastly as if she saw the Lord ! and surely nothing 
less heavenly could have reflected such a glori- 
ous radiance upon her face. For ten minutes 
we watched that almost visible meeting with her 

King, and her countenance was so glad, as if she 

87 



Cheerful To-days and 

were already talking to him. Then she tried 
to sing, but after one sweet, high note, her voice 
failed, and as her brother commended her soul 
to the Redeemer's hand she passed away V' 

I have purposely introduced this little ac- 
count of the last scene of a beautiful earthly 
life, because it seems plain to me that our young 
people might make so much use, if they would, 
of a ministry of music in their daily life. I 
do not say in their religious life, for there can 
be no separation, in a truly consecrated heart, 
between one part of duty and another. Every 
bit of life is hallowed if indeed we belong to the 
King ; and all service rendered to him, in what- 
soever place, must be fit to ask his blessing upon. 
If Christ were sitting in our drawing-room, 
what sort of music should we play ? What songs 
should we sing ? That is always a true test, and 
whosoever is willing to bring to it any question 
of right or wrong will speedily find it answered 

and, once for all, settled. 

88 



Trustful To-morrows 



CHAPTEE XI 

Of Beauty and Its Charm 

A VERY wise woman once said that ^^the great- 
est of blessings for some people would be to 
learn to accept themselves and their gifts. If 
they could stand apart from themselves awhile 
and see their becoming points much of their 
repining would be dropped/^ Every thing and 
every body is beautiful in its season. There 
is a wholesome plainness that accords with 
domestic life and natural surroundings, as the 
bark of trees relieves their green. The color 
of health and the gentleness and sweetness that 
come of a conquered self are elements of beauty 
that make any face tolerable. 

How dear are the faces of those that have 
watched our childhood, with whom we have 
grown up so closely that feature and form have 
lost their significance and we really do not know 
whether they are homely or noty and see only the 
love that lives in them. 

I often wonder why women care so much 

about their looks. Youth has a rare perfection 

89 



Cheerful To-days and 

belonging to itself. To be young is to be lovely, 
unless the young face be spoiled by ill temper 
or self will, or an expression of contempt or 
disdain. A clear pure complexion, bright eyes, 
smooth hair, are within the grasp of anyone who 
lives according to the laws of health, eats nour- 
ishing food, takes sufficient sleep, and bathes 
with regularity. Water, air, food, exercise, 
these are the requirements of health, and health 
is the basis of beauty. 

Beyond this the mind enters in as a factor, 
and the mind not only governs the body but per- 
vades it as a lamp scatters the darkness in a 
room. A lovely soul makes a lovely face. 

I have seen a young woman reared in the close 
surrounding atmosphere of a tenement neigh- 
borhood, a neighborhood where eighteen hun- 
dred people were packed and crowded into one 
short block. That girl has known nothing of 
sweetness and light. Her ears have heard 
coarse words, her eyes have seen dirt and dis- 
order, she has known drunkenness and brutality, 
meanness and sordidness, through her child- 
hood and youth. In her countenance lived no 
refinement and little brightness. Even the 

usual prettiness of girlhood had not stamped her 

90 ' 



Trustful To-mokrows 

form and figure, bowed by much carrying about 
of heavy babies while she was a child and by 
strenuous labor in a hot factory when she first 
grew up. 

Brought into the pleasant and serene atmos- 
phere of a Girls^ Club, taught that the world 
held friends, and brought to know the best 
Friend, I have seen the roughness and coarse- 
ness drop from such a nature, as a withered husk 
from a flower, and the bud open in strange 
purity and fragrance. Day by day there has 
dawned a new charm in the features, which have 
visibly softened; day by day a lovelier beauty 
has been marked, as gentleness replaced rude- 
ness and love did its mellowing work. 

No one has ever engaged in a hand to hand 
conflict with poverty and sin without seeing 
that, as Christ^s dear ones were rescued from the 
adversary, there came to them a wonderful im- 
provement of personality as part of their 
redemption. 

In our cheerful outlook on life we must not 

forget this dominance of mind over body, nor 

ignore the potentiality of the spiritual over the 

material. And it is beneath the attention of 

no sensible woman — or man, for that matter — 

91 



Cheerful To-days and 

to care enough for dress to make dress appro- 
priate to every occasion. The fashion of the 
hour allows much latitude ; we may be costumed 
in accordance with convenience and yet not out- 
rage public opinion. Our girls go where they 
will in short skirts and thick boots; even our 
elderly women adopt a toilette for storms and 
rainy weather at which the conservative used to 
shake very doubtful heads. A little study of 
colors and shapes^ above all an exquisite neat- 
ness and tidiness^ will go far toward making 
women ideally charming in their homes. 

We who are young are insensibly making the 
women we are to be by and by. The girl of 
twenty is the artist in whose hands lies her 
future self of forty; the woman of forty^ and 
she alone, can indicate the woman of sixty. 
Why are women so desperately shy of lines and 
wrinkles? These are not necessarily deface- 
ments ; they are often enhancements of charm. 
Nothing can possibly be more pitiful than an 
elderly face in which the lines are painfully 
smoothed out by anxious massage and the use 
of cosmetics. Life should write its history in 
every woman's face. The comeliness of youth 

is of another order than the attractiveness of a 

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Trustpul To-morrows 

later period. A very plain young woman may be 
handsome in middle age^ and a singularly beau- 
tiful girl may grow ordinary and inconspicuous 
when old. In the eyes of husband^ father, 
brother and lover beauty is not a mere affair 
of tint and air; it is freely accorded to those 
who make for them the sunshine of their days. 

To the Turk, a mountain of flesh with folds 
of fat hanging from her chin is eminently pleas- 
ing. For the Chinese, the spectacle of an 
enameled lady tottering on tiny deformed feet 
fills perfectly his strange ideal. We look for 
dignity, composure, and gentleness, and as their 
fitting accompaniment expect symmetry and 
grace. 

Euskin sums up the idea of the modern 
woman in a famous passage: ^^The woman's 
power is for rule, not for battle, and her intel- 
lect is not for invention or creation, but for 
sweet ordering, arrangement and decision. She 
sees the qualities of things, their claims and 
their places. Her great function is Praise ; she 
enters into no contest, but infallibly judges the 
crown of contest. By her office and place she 
is protected from all danger and temptation. 

The man in his rough work in the open world 

93 



Cheerful To-days and 

must encounter all peril and trial; to him, 
therefore, the failure, the offense, the inevita- 
ble error ; often he must be wounded or subdued, 
often misled, and always hardened. But he 
guards the woman from all this; within his 
house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has 
sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, 
no cause of error or offense. This is the true 
nature of home; it is the place of peace; the 
shelter not only from all injury but from all 
terror, doubt and division. 

^^In so far as it is not this it is not home. So 
far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate 
into it, and the inconsistently-minded, un- 
known, unloved, or hostile society of the outer 
world is allowed by either husband or wife to 
cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it is 
then only a part of that outer world which you 
have roofed over and lighted fire in. But so 
far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a tem- 
ple watched over by the household gods before 
whose faces none may come but those whom 
they can receive with love, so far as it is this, 
and roof and fire are types only of a nobler 
shade and light — shade as of the rocks in the 

weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the 

94 



Trustful To-morrows 

stormy sea — so far it vindicates the name and 
fulfills the praise of home." 

What has this to do with beauty? Every- 
thing. For beauty is harmony^ beauty is pro- 
portion, beauty is a rhythm in which there is no 
discord. When one meets a thoroughly poised 
and balanced nature one meets beauty, and it is 
instantly recognized and immediately begins 
its work of beneficence. 

One finds it difficult and elusive when one 
endeavors to give it definition. Witness the 
laborious efforts of certain novelists who have 
tried to depict their heroines, telling of features, 
skin, hair, and ej^es, and leaving one as ignorant 
at the end as at the beginning of the real ap- 
pearance of the subject. So truth-telling a 
medium as the camera is often misleading, for 
beauty resides in expression rather than in ex- 
ternals which grief may corrode, illness mar, 
and the advance of time destroy. 

"I have never before met people with such 

light in their faces," said one who entered a 

company where Christ^s love was the pervading 

note. The blessedness and the purity of their 

high communion so exalted them that the very 

lines of their countenances were ennobled. 

95 



Cheerful To-days and 



CHAPTEE XII 

Mothers and Sons 

The mother was tall and fair and bine-eyed, 
a well-balanced, strong and cheery woman. 
Her boys were like her; her daughter repeated 
the traits of her poet father, and was slight, 
and dark, and given to day dreams. It was a 
happy household, full of interest, never dull, 
never two days alike; it had as many changes 
and varying aspects as the sky. Around it, set 
in its beautiful garden of flowers — roses, lilies, 
violets, pansies, every sweet blooming and per- 
fumed blossom you could imagine — stretched 
the endless Florida forests, the straight pines 
standing solemnly like sentries, the weird moss 
draping the branches, the red bird and the 
mocking bird flitting to and fro. 

The family were always poor, and often they 

had no balance in any bank save that of faith, 

so that when the flour was low in the barrel, and 

the meal was nearly out, the mother would go to 

her closet and say simply, ^^Lord, thou seest my 

96 



Trusteul To-moerows 

need. Send help soon. Thou openest thine 
hand and satisfiest the desire of every living 
thing. Give us this day our daily bread.^^ And 
that day^ though the poems sent so wistfully to 
the far-away magazines and papers at the north 
often came flying back with a polite letter of 
rejection^ there would come instead a more wel- 
come letter with a check, and then there would 
be a fete day. A neighbor, anybody within four 
miles was a neighbor, would lend his old rock- 
away and his staid and quiet horse, and my 
friend and two or three of the children would 
jog to the nearest town and, as she gayly said, 
provision the garrison. 

If the dear house-mother had been ever so 
rich she would still have had to do her own 
work, in that vicinity, for everybody else did 
the same, and help from outside was not to 
be had. Husband and children lent their will- 
ing hands, and there was no housework which 
the boys were ashamed or afraid to undertake, 
from dish washing to the harder labor of the 
laundry. These lads, who could iron and bake 
and sweep and make beds, were prepared for 
college by their parents, and successively went 

there, and were graduated with honors, paying 

97 



Cheerful To-days and 

their own way for the most part, and enduring 
hardness like good soldiers. 

I used to receive long merry letters from this 
brave lady, a mother of men who fulfilled my 
ideal of what such a mother's boys should be; 
letters bright, chatty, sparkling with wit and 
anecdote, written by bits and snatches as she 
waited for the loaves in the oven to brown, or 
laid aside her mending for a moment's rest. 
She would speak of the lad at her knee reciting 
his Latin grammar propped up before her 
kneading board, or would apologize for an in- 
terrupted paragraph by explaining that Don- 
ald had just called her to come to his den and 
listen to his last story or ballad before he sent 
it away on its voyage in search of a port. 
^^Somehow,^' she would add, ^^Donald thinks the 
poems have a better chance if they go off with 
my blessing — mine ! — and I couldn^t write a 
couplet to save my life/' She could do better; 
she could be her husband's inspiration and his 
cheery comrade on the roughest road, always 
heartening him by her quips and sallies, always 
having herself the grace of going merrily 
onward. 

A hard-working, far-reaching, useful life was 

98 



Trustful To-morrows 

this^ as the lives of good mothers must ever be. 
Her sons to-day represent her in many fields, 
they are active in countless endeavors for good; 
they are the unselfish, loyal and devoted hus- 
bands that such a mother could train to lift a 
little the burden of the great world. 

To speak of the mother-brooding which en- 
folds the opening years of a man's life as the 
dearest experience which life will ever hold for 
him may be in a sense untrue. Man must live 
through multiform experiences and taste many 
a cup divinely brewed. There are for him sac- 
ramental days which lift him up to a plane of 
almost heavenly joy here and there on his prog- 
ress through the world. The day when he defi- 
nitely decides to stand for Christ against the 
temptations of lower ambition and mere tem- 
poral advantage is forever after starred for him 
in happiest memory. 

The day when he finds his ideal enshrined in 
a fair woman, and she returns his love in sweet 
trustfulness and gracious surrender, is thence- 
forward a glad anniversary. 

The day when the cry of the firstborn is in the 
house and the sweetness of heaven haloes the 

face of the mother is set apart as the day of the 

1 . r - 99 



Cheerful To-days and 

solemn feast, of the crowning and the laurel. 
Yet, more and more, as time goes on and youth 
passes, the heart of the son turns yearningly to 
the golden dawn when mother love made his 
childhood safe and sheltered and beautiful. 

There is something of the woman nature in 
every finely tempered man, as the best women, 
on the other hand, have derived something from 
the father. Each sex complements the other in 
a mysterious but evident exchange of gifts, so 
that, were such a thing possible, a wholly fem- 
inine woman would be not altogether pleasing, 
and a whoUj^ masculine man would be somewhat 
too arbitrary, if not too overbearing and per- 
haps brutal of type. In the highest style of 
manhood and womanhood we find the human 
element composed of the best in both halves of 
the race, so that daughters are often most like 
fathers, and sons most like mothers, from a law 
which goes deep into the primitive conditions of 
being. The mother who would see her sons grow 
up worthily must not count her life dear in the 
years when they are under her molding hand. 
She must share their pursuits from the era of 
balls and tops to the era of falling in love. 

iN'ever to lose her boy^s confidence is the 

100 



Teustful To-morrows 

wisest counsel which can be given a mother, but 
how is she to attain this end ? Only by putting 
and keeping her boys first. Only by subordinat- 
ing other engagements^ of pleasure, of society, 
of church work, of philanthropy, to the more 
important appointments she has in the nursery, 
on the playground and around the evening 
lamp. She should know her boys^ companions, 
and be their friend, and partially their 
confidante. 

A woman whose sweet face rises in my 
thought has done this for her son, though she 
has been handicapped by continual literal bond- 
age to her couch of pain during the years of his 
childhood and youth. Unable to bear her 
weight on the floor or to walk a single step, un- 
able to turn herself in bed without assistance, 
this woman's indomitable will has united with 
her Christian courage to keep her from casting 
a shadow on the wholesome sunshine of her 
boy's life. She has kept pace with him in his 
studies and his games, has interviewed his 
teachers, stimulated him to sustained endeavor, 
and given him a knowledge of what God's love 
can make of woman when tried in the furnace 

and seven times purified. 
8 101 



Cheerful To-days and 

If a woman worn with bodily pain and spent 
with weakness may do so much, what may not 
one accomplish whose life is unfettered and who 
is free to go and come as she chooses ? 

One has only to see how quickly the ailing, 
sobbing baby hushes its querulous cries when 
taken up in the arms of a tender and loving 
man, its father or another, with a compassion- 
ate heart, to realize the secret of strength and 
gentleness combined, to get at the core of the 
Psalmist's meaning when he exclaims, ^^Thy 
gentleness hath made me great/' Passing the 
love of women, passing the tenderness of women, 
are the love and the tenderness of men in 
relations which draw closely upon their reserves 
of sympathy. A bo)^ who studies the needs and 
devotes himself to the comfort of an invalid 
mother will make a considerate husband to some 
happy woman. What the French call petits 
soins come readily to men who have had at times 
in their lives to look out for the welfare of some- 
what dependent kinswomen. 

But there is another side of the shield. 

When the boys go out from the home nest to 

the larger world, perhaps to business, perhaps 

to college, the wise mother still keeps in touch 

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Trustful . To-morrows 

with them. A good many young people in this 
land have heard of Hugh Beaver^ that splendid 
fellow whose life ended on earth at twenty-four;, 
two years ago^ and who suddenly heard the 
Master^s call to ^^Come up higher !'^ When 
Hugh went to college his biographer says that 
he was ^^a straight-forward, genial, sunny- 
hearted boy, but the more serious problems of 
an earnest life lay before him, and the deeper 
springs of his character and power were still 
sealed/^ His mother wrote to him about this 
time, ^^I hope, darling, you have learned the 
comfort of taking everything to God in prayer. 
Nothing is too trifling. Be sure to pray before 
leaving your room in the morning. We need 
our Father's help and guidance in all that we 
do. May the Lord bless you, and enable you to 
live a consistent useful life to his praise and 
glory, is the prayer of your loving mother.^' 

A certain strange reluctance comes between 
some mothers and their sons, when matters re- 
lating to the Christian life are in concern. If 
we were close to our Lord would we not be able 
to overcome this shyness? Yet often the 
younger heart is waiting and longing for the 

word of counsel, is earnestly desiring that the 

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Cheerful To-days and 

older one may take the initiative in the Conver- 
sation. I would that mothers should not only 
pray for but with their sons, kneeling beside the 
bed at night, drawing them now and again into 
their own chambers for a little tender twilight 
talk. We are too cowardly when we shrink 
from speaking of the dear Lord, and hesitate 
to introduce his name into our daily talk in the 
household. 

So it happens that opportunities are lost. 
Souls have been almost in contact, but have 
glided apart. Each goes its separate way. The 
friend of Christ — ah me ! was that friend a 
mother ? — has been silent, and timorous, and so 
the Beloved has withdrawn himself and is gone. 
Looking at her sturdy little man, mother may 
feel like saying : 

"My laddie, O my laddie, I am wistful as I clasp 

Your little hand within my own, and think how 
many men 
Gone far from earth and memory, beyond our mortal 
grasp. 
Are living and are breathing, dear child, in you 
again. 

"My laddie of the golden hair, there stand at God's 
right hand 
His saints who went through blood and flame, the 
yeomen of our line ; 

104 



Trustful To-morrows 

And there are seraphs singing in the glorious better 
land 
Whose heart-beats kept, when here on earth, the 
pace of yours and mine. 

"Kneel, little laddie, at my side ; there's no defense 
like this, 
An evening prayer in childish trust, and let him 
scoff who may ; 
A daily prayer to God above, a gentle mother's kiss, 
Will keep my little laddie safe, however dark the 
day." 

^^What shall I do about taking my restless 
boys to church ?^^ asked a mother of a dear aged 
minister who had been her girlhood's pastor. 
^^They do not understand the services, and find 
them tedious ; they fidget and complain of Sun- 
day as a wearisome day. Would I not do better 
to postpone their church-going until they are 
older r 

^^KTo/^ was the reply. ^^Train them up in the 
way they should go. By accustoming them to 
constant attendance in God's housC;, you will 
form in them a good habit.^' We are unfortu- 
nately bringing up a generation which does not 
feel the obligation of keeping holy the Lord's 
Day, which acts its own pleasure, not seeks to 
know God's will in this matter. Mothers must 

look to this and reform it. 

105 



Cheerful To-days and 

Indeed they can. And here let me add that 
good behavior in church is just as important as 
good behavior anywhere else, and j)art of it 
begins at the very beginning ; in being in church 
a little while before the service commences. In 
our home in my childhood, at family worship, 
my father had a way, which I remember pleas- 
antly in contrast with the hurrying methods of 
to-day, of starting everything with a margin, 
so that nobody should be late. He insisted that 
the young people of the house should always 
come to prayers if they were well, and he him- 
self, Bible in hand, would be seated five minutes 
before the appointed time, waiting for us all to 
come. I can see him now across the years, his 
gray hair brushed back from his serene face, his 
eyes lighted with a rare inner smile, his look 
expressing the greatest patience. 

^^I like to compose my mind,^^ he would say, 
'^before I enter the presence of the King.^^ 

I can hear him softly crooning his favorite 

hymn, if I lean back in my chair and listen — 

hear it as if the voice which sung these stanzas 

had not been for many long years singing with 

the Redeemer above. And his voice was very 

sweet as he sang : 

106 



Trustful To-morrows 

**How happy are they 

Who the Saviour obey, 
And have laid up their treasure above. 

O what tongue can express 

The sweet comfort and peace 
Of a soul in its earliest love." 

One of the unwritten laws always observed 
in this good man^s home was that nobody should 
be tardy to church. This habit clings to me 
still. I am distressed and humiliated if ever by 
accident I am so late that I must walk down the 
aisle after the pastor has begun the service. It 
seems to me as impolite to be late at church as 
to be late at any other function which has a 
fixed hour for starting. 

Besides^ it is really unnecessary. The habit- 
ually tardy person usually catches his train, if 
this is important in his day's engagements, and 
the train labeled, ^^Divine service, half-past ten 
o'clock,'^ can be as easily caught if one chooses 
to take pains in the matter. 

I hold that the thoroughly well-bred person 
will be well behaved in church. He or she will 
sit still. He will not whisper, she will not gig- 
gle, neither will comment on the people who 
have come to church, neither will make secular 

engagements while service is going on. Above 

107 



Cheerful To-days and 

all things no decently behaved person will read 
printed calendars, or turn over leaflets, or pull 
letters from his pocket, or fumble through the 
hymn-book, while the Commandments or the 
Scripture lessons are being read. I have seen 
well-dressed and intelligent people doing these 
things, and they were convicted of impoliteness 
and lack of training by their actions. 

Crowning impropriety of all, no one with any 
claim to good breeding will pull out a watch 
and consult it during the service. 

I observe that many persons coming late 
into church drop their heads upon their pews for 
their private devotions with no reference to 
what is going on at the moment. This does not 
seem to me quite right. A better way is to 
unite in whatever part of the service is in prog- 
ress; one's own little prayer being supposed to 
anticipate the entire worship, not to interject 
itself on the worship which is appointed. As 

the old Psalm has it, we may declare : 

"I joyed when to the house of God 

Go up, they said to me. 
Jerusalem, within thy gates 

Our feet shall standing be.'* 

'T[f I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right 

hand forget her cunning.^^ ^^I would rather be a 

108 



Tkusitul To-mokeows 

doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell 
in the tents of wickedness/^ 

This is the heart's cry of the generation which 
are brought up to serve the King in his sacred 
courts. 

In the intercourse of families there is often 
too little demonstration. Affection should 
freely express itself. We are much too apt to 
take for granted the fact that we love one an- 
other. In the truly well-regulated Christian 
household there is little need for discipline as 
expressed in punishment. Coercion is un- 
heard of, A habit of referring everything to the 
arbitration of the Heavenly Father keeps dis- 
obedience to the earthly parents far from the 
happy fold. The mother should not exact of 
her boys submission to her authority because she 
intimates a wish ; she stands to them as one who 
is carrying out the will of God, and who desires 
to help them to understand and obey the same 
sweet will. There can be no jars in a home 
attuned to the Divine harmonies. Let the 
mother dwell with God and her children will be 
brought into God's Kingdom. 

^^I saw the Holy Spirit shining in my mother's 

face through all my boyhood/' said a college 

109 



Cheerful To-days and 

professor, ^^and her piety and faithfulness drew 
us, a large family, safe into the service of the 
Master, though our father was not a Christian 
until we were all grown up/^ 

A mother should be satisfied for her children 
with no development but the best, and the best 
is not found outside of that company in which 
Jesus is the chief and the dearest guest. 

"In the secret of his presence 
From the hurrying world I hide, 

In the secret of his presence 
Very safely I abide. 

And he gives me 7nany a sign 
Of his grace and love divine, 

"Care and labor are my portion. 

Toil and care till evensong, 
But the hours, though often weary. 

Never drag their load along. 
For the blessing of the Master 

Makes the heaviest burden light. 
In the secret of his presence 

When I dwell from morn till night, 

"In the secret of his presence 

Any cross he bids me take, 
Garlanded with sweetest flowers. 

Wears the legend *For his sake.' 
I am happy as I serve him, 

Happy as I walk the road 
Which my Master went before me. 

Straight unto the throne of God. 
For he gives me many a sign 

Of his grace and poiver divine,^* 
110 



Trustful To-mokrows 



CHAPTER XIII 
Linked with Many Lives 

The recluse shuts himself in his study, finds 
delight in his books or his musings and shuns 
society. He may do no man wrong, he may 
even do good after a fashion of his own, but he 
lives a self -centered and self-absorbed life. It 
is better that one should touch others at many 
points, that one should be interested in his fel- 
lows, that more and more one should seek to 
know and to care for persons outside of his own 
immediate circle, and to observe life and affairs 
from a viewpoint that is not wholly one's own. 

At an early age the threads of contact with 

other homes begin to weave themselves into the 

woof of our being. First the kindred are our 

only associates, the father, mother, grandfather 

and grandmother, brothers, sisters, uncles, 

aunts, cousins. The family feeling strikes deep 

roots; we care for those of our own blood, we 

belong to them, and they to us. But with 

school days we begin to form our friendships 

beyond the threshold of the home. There is a 

111 



Cheerful To-days and 

little golden-haired girl who sits beside us in the 
class, there is a shock-headed boy who walks 
home from school with us, and we learn through 
intercourse with them that there are people 
worth knowing in the world besides those who 
live at our house. I sat beside a child's desk 
this summer in a little red schoolhouse in the 
mountains and Whittier's lines came back 
to me: 

**Still sits the schoolhouse by the road, 

A ragged beggar sleeping ; 
Around it still the sumachs grow 

And blackberry vines are creeping. 

"Within, the master's desk is seen 

Deep scarred by raps official, 
The warping floor, the battered seats, 

The jackknife's carved initial. 

"The charcoal frescoes on its wall, 

Its door's worn sill, betraying 
The feet that, creeping slow to school. 

Went storming out to playing I 

"Long years ago a winter sun 

Shone over it at setting ; 
Lit up its western window panes 

And low eaves' icy-fretting. 

"It touched the tangled golden curls 
And brown eyes, full of grieving, 

Of one who still her steps delayed 
When all the school were leaving. 
112 



Teustful To-morrows 

"For near her stood the little boy 

Her childish favor singled ; 
His cap pulled low upon a face 

Where pride and shame were mingled, 

"Pushing with restless feet the snow 
To right and left he lingered ; 

As restlessly her tiny hands 

The blue checked apron fingered. 

**He saw her lift her eyes ; he felt 
The soft hand's light caressing, 

And heard the tremble of her voice 
As if a fault confessing. 

" *I'm sorry that I spelt the word ; 

I hate to go above you, 
Because,' the brown eyes lower fell, 

^Because, you see, I love you.' 

"Still memory to a gray-haired man 
That sweet child-face is showing ; 

Dear girl, the grasses o'er her grave 
Have forty years been growing. 

"He lives to learn in life's hard school 
How few who pass above him 

Lament their triumph and his loss 
Because, like her, they love him." 



Some of my happiest recollections are of my 

school days when I was a rosy romping child 

drawn to school over the snow on a playmate's 

sled. The red apples and doughnuts which 

we shared at luncheon had a toothsome flavor 

113 



Cheerful To-days and 

nnsurpassed by any delicate viands of later 
years. As a child of ten^ in a school on the 
banks of the Passaic conducted by three lovely 
sisters who have gone to their rest, leaving be- 
hind them the record of a fruitful life full of 
faithful work for the Master, I formed some of 
life's most lasting friendships. Still, in our 
autumn, women who were girls with me in the 
sweet spring of our days come to sit beside my 
fire, and to talk over the lessons we were taught 
by Miss Anna and Miss Elizabeth Eogers. Our 
beautiful sainted Miss Jane went very early to 
the other land, ere her youth had faded, and 
while her cheek was round and her dark eyes 
bright with the light of love and joy. 

From those dear teachers I first learned that 
life cannot be lived alone, that each life must 
link itself with many others. We are partakers 
of that Divine nature which gathers to its breast 
and bears upon its everlasting arms the suc- 
cessive generations of our race. In God's heart 
there is room for all. Our Saviour in his won- 
derful prayer before he left the world included 
his own who should believe in him to every age, 
and the sweet meaning comforts us in all tribu- 
lation ; the tender fullness of that prayer makes 

114 



Trustful To-morrows 

glad our waste places, and feeds our soul hun- 
ger. Eeverently may we in one respect com- 
pare ourselves with God, for, made in his image, 
he has not habited us in mean raiment, or com- 
pelled us to dwell in cramped quarters. Our 
souls live in palaces many-chambered, and fair, 
and in one room we receive some of our guests, 
and in another we welcome others, and there 
are beautiful withdrawing rooms where we hold 
converse with our very dearest dear. 

We need not be afraid of making new friend- 
ships. Love in its supremest royalty comes 
not to evervone. There are beautiful natures 
which, for one reason or another, dwell in sin- 
gleness throughout their pilgrimage, but these 
are very often most generously endowed with a 
capacity for making and keeping friends. 

Besides, in the changes of the swiftly moving 
j^ears, the landscape of our lives is always sub- 
ject to alteration. 

"Friend after friend departs. 

Who hath not lost a friend? 
There is no union here of hearts 

That finds not here an end." 

We must keep adding to our stock of friends, 

must be responsive to new claimants, must keep 

115 



Cheerful To-days and 

open doors for the good and the true. How de- 
lightful it is to think not only of all the pleasant 
people we have met but of the unknown visit- 
ants whom we are yet to meet. We never go 
to an unfamiliar town, to a mountain or sea- 
side hostelry, to a little hamlet high up and hid- 
den away in the hills, that we do not discover 
somebody who on one side of our nature attracts 
us ; somebody whom we can bless by our giving 
or from whom we can take a blessing. 

We retain our youth by our susceptibility to 
friendship. He who has lost desire to win and 
pleasure in keeping friends has gone far into the 
shadowy realm of old age. Selfishness may 
breed a premature decrepitude of the affections. 
We must be careful not to lose interest in our 
neighbors, not to become indifferent to ac- 
quaintances — new or of longer standing. 

Our lives may go out into all the earth if we 
are coworkers in the great missionary move- 
ments for evangelizing the world. Away off in 
ISTew Mexico, many miles from kith and kin, 
in a community where none but themselves 
speak English, two brave girls are teaching 
little children the way of life, and showing 

to those around them the light of a Christian 

116 



Trustful To-morrows 

home. God bless our fearless home mission- 
aries^ working steadfastly for him in dark cor- 
ners where they face perils loneliness and dis- 
couragement. Out in Dakota, in a sod house, 
dwell a missionary family, father, mother, chil- 
dren, in poverty and privation, fighting for the 
Master, and making a center for his disciples 
to gather around him. Shall we not care for 
these — not merely by sending a box or a barrel, 
now and then, filled with needed clothing 
and household supplies — by our prayers, our 
thoughts, our love? 

Far over the ocean, in Northern India, in 
China, in Japan, in the Islands under our flag, 
there are heroic men and women toiling "In His 
JSTame.^^ Our beloved foreign missionaries are 
too often forgotten when they are off, beyond 
our sight and hearing, in the remoteness of their 
exile. 

"The greatest hardship the missionary has 

to bear,^^ says Dr. E. B. Peary, "is his loneliness 

and isolation. Separated almost entirely from 

his own race, he is deprived of all those social 

joys that are so dear to him. The thought of 

his kinsmen and friends is ever in his mind, but, 

alas ! they are so far away. He must go on, 
9 117 



Cheeuful To-days and 

year after year^ living among a people from 
whom an impassable gulf separates him, leading 
the same lonely life. For the first year or two 
he rather enjoys the quiet and privacy, but by 
and by it becomes almost unendurable/^ 

Dr. Edmund Lawrence, on the same subject 
thus sums up the whole matter, ^^Very many 
of the missionary's heaviest burdens are in- 
cluded in the one word, whose height and 
breadth and length and depth none knows so 
well as he — the word ^exile.' It is not merely 
a physical exile from home and country and all 
their interests; it is not only an intellectual 
exile from all that would feed and stimulate the 
mind; it is yet more, a spiritual exile from the 
guidance, the instruction, the support, the fel- 
lowship and the communion of the church at 
home.'' 

Furthermore, after a few years of absence, 

the missionary hears seldom from the home 

land, except as official communications come 

from the boards of the church, or epistles arrive 

from his immediate family. ^^Even these latter 

become less and less frequent. The arrival of 

the mails, which at first was looked forward to 

with so much joy, is now scarcely noted. 'After 

118 



Trustful To-morrows 

a few years of residence in the East one feels 
that he is largely out of touch with the life of 
the West, and that he is forgotten by home and 
friends/^ 

Here may some of us not discover a mission ? 
May we not devote some part of our time to the 
sending of good cheer to our foreign mission- 
aries? Not writing them perfunctory letters, 
nor filling those we do send with exclusively 
religious news, but giving them glimpses of our 
life at home, of our books, our music, our pic- 
tures, and our household gayeties. Even our 
new bonnets may interest a missionary woman 
living where nobody wears a bonnet. 

The main thing is to remember that no man 
liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself ; 
that we are bound in one bundle, and must bear 
one another^s burdens, and, if we would be 
Christ-like, must keep in touch with many lives. 

Shall I show you a leaf, now, from the daily 
life of a home missionary? 

The wind whistled and the snow sifted into 

every crevice of the log cabin in which Mr. and 

Mrs.. Harmstead and their children had made 

their home for the last six months. They had 

carefully stuffed everv aperture with rags and 

"119 



Cheerful To-days and 

paper, and covered the walls with pictures cut 
from the old numbers of Harper s Weekly and 
other periodicals which found their way to this 
little Western home. Still, there were noots 
and crannies which neither wife nor husband 
could make so weathertight that they were 
proof against the wild storms of the region. A 
year ago their home had been more comfortable, 
but in a fierce cyclone, months before, the little 
frame house had been blown down, and the only 
place in which the missionary and his wife could 
find shelter was this little log cabin, originally 
built by a settler who had in time abandoned it 
for more comfortable quarters. The church 
next door was really a better refuge against 
winter storms than the house in which the min- 
ister had his dwelling. Indeed, there were oc- 
casions when Mrs. Harmstead was compelled to 
hurry her brood out of the cabin and into the 
church that they might sleep in some degree of 
warmth and comfort. The benches on which 
the children sat at the table belonged to the 
church, and were carried in there for services 
on Sundays, and on week days when the people 
came to prayer meeting. 

This morning it seemed to the Harmsteads 

120 



Trustful To-morrows 

that it would be safer to move over into the 
church till the weather changed. So, taking a 
few necessary cooking utensils and what bed- 
ding they could carry, the family migrated, 
fearing that the storm would make it impossible 
for them to do so later in the day. The church 
could at least be made comfortable. 

Once settled there, Mr. Harmstead seated 
himself in a corner to study his sermon for the 
next day, while his wife established the chil- 
dren with their books and toys, and herself read 
for the twentieth time a letter which had 
reached her a day or two previous. 

The letter was from the ladies of the church 
at home to which she had belonged in her girl- 
hood. When Emily Fuller married Duncan 
Harmstead there was no prettier girl or fairer 
bride in all the township and surrounding 
country. A college graduate, she was familiar 
with the best that books and art could give her, 
and her home had been replete with every re- 
finement and the comforts which people in 
ordinary circumstances in the East enjoy as a 
matter of course. Going with her husband to 
his field of service in Nebraska, the young wife 

understood that she was accepting hardness, 

121 



Cheerful To-days and 

and that self-denial and privation would to 
some extent be her portion. The years^ seven, 
since her marriage day, had flown rapidly along, 
but they had done the work of fourteen on the 
sweet face of the woman who had shared pov- 
erty, labor, and many a grief at her husband's 
side, always uncomplainingly, though the many 
cares had left their mark upon her nature. She 
was less hopeful now than once, and sometimes 
her buoyant faith failed her for a little time. It 
sometimes seemed as if God had forgotten her. 
Often she said to herself, "If my dear ones at 
home realized the daily suffering of a mission- 
ary's lot, surely they would do something to 
lighten it.^^ By a series of circumstances not 
unusual in families, those nearest of kin to her 
had either died or become so impoverished that 
they could give her little substantial help, and 
Mr. Harmstead was a man with few relatives 
on whom to call. The salary of a home mis- 
sionary is small at best. In the case of Mr. 
Harmstead it was seldom fully paid and never 
promptly. The Board sent some aid to the 
struggling Western church, but there was al- 
ways a great discrepancy between income and 

outgo on the part of both the missionary and 

122 



Trustful To-morrows 

the church. The letter read as follows. Mrs. 
Harmstead knew it by heart : 

^^Dear Emily : Your old friends in Hazleton 
Church wish to send you a present which will 
be just what you want. Now, with the utmost 
frankness, will you let us know what to pack in 
the barrel or barrels which we are sending to 
your far-away home. Do not fail to tell us just 
what you and the good man and the bairns are 
most in want of, and so far as we can we will 
try to meet your needs. We consider this a 
privilege, and are only sorry that it did not 
sooner occur to us that for our missionary we 
might take one dear lady who grew up among 
us and whom we fondly remember.^^ 

The letter had touched a very tender chord 

in Mrs. Harmstead^s heart, and as she sat down 

to answer it she was divided between the wish 

to state exactly her needs and a little feeling of 

delicacy in revealing the extent of her poverty. 

She decided at last that candor was the only 

course; that as God had opened this door for 

her it was her place to walk through it, not 

thinking about the impression she would make 

on her old friends, but merely telling the exact 

truth. So taking her pad and pencil, for the 

123 



Cheerful To-days and 

minister was using the only inkstand and the 
only pen they possessed, she said : 

^^Dear Friends : I have hesitated a little how 
to answer your kindest of letters, but I have 
resolved at last that the only thing for me to do 
is to be entirely truthful. We are literally in 
need of- everything. My husband is destitute 
of underclothing (on another slip of paper I 
give you his size) . He has no overcoat and this 
weather is freezing. Last winter he wore all 
the year only a mackintosh, which is now 
threadbare, and an old shawl of mine wound 
around his shoulders in the coldest days. 
K'either my husband nor any of the children 
have decent stockings or shoes (on another slip 
of paper I give you the sizes). Little Bertha 
has outgrown all her frocks, and I have made 
them over for Euth. Eddie is in rags and tat- 
ters ; not one of the children is decently clad or 
even comfortably. I say nothing about myself ; 
but I have not had a new gown other than a 
calico since my marriage, seven years ago, nor 
have I had a new pair of gloves since that time 
— a pair of mittens would be a luxury. How- 
ever, it makes very little difference about me ; I 

can stay in the house, but I do long to have 

124 



Trustful To-morrows 

something warm for my husband and something 
to keep the children from cold and chilblains 
in this fearfully bitter climate. We do not 
suffer for lack of food, as our people are very 
kind, and thus far the Lord has always sent us 
supplies as he did Elijah by the brook Cherith; 
but we never have ready money, and when our 
money does come we have to pay it all out at the 
store in return for bills that have accrued. I 
am not sorry that I came with my husband to 
this hard field. God has sent us here, and he 
is enabling us to light a candle in a dark place. 
I have no regrets or repinings. We have been 
very happy in each other and with our dear chil- 
dren; but there come days when we would like 
to be in touch with our old friends. If you can 
slip a new book or two into the barrel for my 
husband it would be an unspeakable boon. He 
would enjoy Edersheim^s Life of Christ so much 
that I mention it, and that book does not cost 
very much now, as I see by a paper which comes 
from some kind friend's hand every week. As 
I read over what I have written I fear you will 
think me lacking in delicacy, for I simply have 
put in such a revelation of our poverty as you 

will hardly believe can exist. So, dear friends, 

125 



Cheerful To-days and 

pack in the barrel what you please, confident 
that very little can come amiss in our house, 
and do not forget to pray for your old friend 
and for the work of God in this distant place. 
Pray for a blessing on my husband's parish. 
^^Affectionately yours, 

^^Emily Harmstead."'' 

A passing teamster took the letter that day 
to the post office, and in due time it found its 
way to the Sewing Society in the church which 
had been Emily Fuller's old home. The ladies 
were seated in the comfortable church parlor. 
They were all warmly and beautifully dressed. 
A sweet-faced woman presided at a table and 
gave out rolls of garments to the needlewomen ; 
the flow of talk, with intermittent peals of soft 
laughter, went smoothly on ; there was a pleas- 
ant air of friendship about the circle. After a 
while the president rapped on the table for 
silence and said, "I have a letter to read to you 
from our old friend, Mrs. Harmstead, who is, as 
most of you know, a home missionary in Ne- 
braska. Some weeks ago I wrote asking for 
just the account she gives of what may be 

needed there, and now I will read us the letter.^^ 

126 





The Sewing Meeting. 



Trustful To-morrows 

As she did so a hush fell upon the group. One 

by one put down her sewing and tears came to 

eyes which were suddenly blurred. When the 

letter was finished there was a little spell of 

quiet, broken by the minister's wife, who said, 

^^Let us pray." Kneeling in her place, she 

offered a heartfelt prayer for the far-away sister 

whom they had forgotten and for the work of 

God which this sister and her husband were 

carrying on so handicapped. She prayed God, 

too, to forgive their own neglect and hardness 

of heart. 

After that, you may be sure, it was not long 

before contributions came pouring in for the 

barrels, which were presently packed and on 

their way to the Harmsteads. It is little to say 

that every need was supplied. There was a new 

gown of warm cashmere for Mrs. Harmstead^ 

in the pocket of which was a purse containing 

a little roll of bills. The minister found in his 

overcoat a pocketbook also lined pleasantly with 

money. Everything which the children could 

require was lovingly inserted here and there in 

the wonderful barrels, and, best of all, the ladies 

of the church decided that the thing they would 

next do would be to raise money to erect a snug 

127 



Cheerful To-days and 

parsonage for this minister's family^ so that it 
might not face another Western winter unpro- 
tected against the elements. 

When the barrels arrived yon may be sure 
there was a deep thanksgiving in the house of 
the home missionary. A thanksgiving which 

lasted a long time. 

128 



Tkustful To-morrows 



CHAPTER XIV 
The Keeping of Home Anniversaries 

Our American tendency is to diminish the 
importance of recreation and to set too high a 
value on work. We are usually obliged to work 
strenuously, and, far from being a misfortune, 
this is a blessing, strengthening and toughening 
character and bracing whatever is best in our 
mental and moral natures. But play has its 
uses too, and demonstration, which retires to 
the background when we are working at high 
pressure, comes to the front when we take a 
holiday. 

Birthdays afford an opportunity for fam- 
ily festivity which should not be overlooked. 
Mother's birthday, father's birthday, the birth- 
day of each son and daughter should be ob- 
served in some pleasant fashion — ^with personal 
greetings and gifts, with the coming in of 
friends. Each year, as we enter it, should be 
marked with a white stone ; it is a stage in our 
progress; it affords us a chance to turn over a 

new leaf in our life's volume. 

129 



Cheerful To-days and 

The years, slow-footed in childhood, race 
rapidly onward when we reach the later seasons 
of our career. There come over us shadows 
and clouds of depression sometimes as we think 
how fast they go and how little we have accom- 
plished. With the poet we exclaim sorrowfully, 
on some gray November day when the frost is 
on the stubble and the trees are shivering : 

"We too have autumns when our leaves 
Drop loosely through the dampened air ; 

When all our good seems bound in sheaves 
And we stand reaped and bare.'* 

Such moods should not be encouraged. They 
rob us of strength, though their tender melan- 
choly is very attractive. 

Better far is that temper of mind w^hich I 
remember in my honored father, cheery from 
youth to age, and singing about the house, 
with a spirit which care could never daunt nor 
dim in its radiant brightness. One of his fa- 
vorite hymns was that dear old lyric of Charles 
Wesley, with its lilt of the lark uprising in the 
morning : 

"Come, let us anew our journey pursue, 

Roll round with the year 
And never stand still till the Master appear. 

130 



Trustful To-morrows 

His adorable will let us gladly fulfill, 

And our talent improve 
By the patience of hope and the labor of love/* 

And another favorite was the hymn in the same 
peculiar, and at one time popular, measure, con- 
taining these stanzas : 

"Of heavenly birth, though wandering on earth 

This is not our place ; 
But strangers and pilgrims ourselves we confess. 

"At Jesus's call we gave up our all ; 

And still we forego, 
For Jesus's sake, our enjoyments below. 
No longing we find for the country behind, 

But onward we move, 
And still we are seeking a country above : 

"A country of joy without any alloy ; 

We thither repair ; 
Our hearts and our treasure already are there. 

4: :ic 4: sfc 4c 

"The rougher our way the shorter our stay ; 

The tempests that rise 
Shall gloriously hurry our souls to the skies. 
The fiercer the blast the sooner 'tis past ; 

The troubles that come 
Shall come to our rescue, and hasten us home." 

The dominant note of our Christian life 
should be that of rejoicing. Lifted above 
anxiety, set free from solicitudes and from irri- 
tations, we should take time to be happy. 

Every holiday, whether peculiar to our own 

131 



Cheerful To-days and 

home or set in the annual calendar, should ar- 
rive on our threshold as if it were an angel 
visitant, and therefore welcome. 

Anniversaries often emphasize the absence of 
dear ones. Our beloved son is in the distant 
East, keeping Christmas as best he can to the 
sound of the drum beat and the bugle call in a 
country which has no reminder of home except , 
the flag under which he serves. But we can 
pray for him and he need not be left out of the 
joy, though in visible presence he cannot now 
share it. It is for the mother whose laddie is 
out of her sight to be brave and patient in this 
time of trial which has come to the great 
republic. 

For such a mother I have written : 

Christmas Far Afield 

Shut your eyes, mother darling, now shut your eyes 

and sleep, 
The wind is like a wolf outside, yet do not wake and 

weep ; 
For overhead the stars are bright, and O ! I see one 

Star 
I'm sure can shine on Willie, it sends its light so far ; 
Our Willie leal and loving, and in the alien land 
The one they need to set things right, so brave of heart 

and hand ; 

132 



Trustful To-morrows 

A lonesome time without him, yes, and little Christ- 
mas joy 

For a mother white and grieving, and hungry for her 
boy. 

But the country is a mother too, and sent her son 
away, 

And that's why some of us are sad this merry Christ- 
mas Day. 

Yet God is here, and God is there, and duty must be 
done, 

And not a mother of us all would dare withhold her 
son 

When the wooing bugles called him, and the throbbing 
drums said "come," 

And he carried o'er the ocean the conscience of his 
home. 

Shut your eyes, little mother, shut your eyes and sleep, 
'Tis Christmas Eve, and o'er the fields the snow is 

drifting deep, 
The air is full of music, it is thrilling sweet and far. 
There's naught to hinder angels, who fly from star to 

star. 
From singing o'er that tropic camp as once they sang 

of old. 
When they leaned so low from heaven, o'er tender 

lambs in fold ; 
And Willie pacing up and down, upon his sentry's 

beat 
May hear the seraph melodies, so wonderful and fleet ; 
I'm told those Eastern places have a magic not like 

ours. 
And spells and dreams that linger there, with curious 

mystic powers ; 
You may cease from fretting, mother ; the Christmas 

joy will be 
Undimmed and beautiful about our lad beyond the sea. 
10 133 



Cheerful To-days and 

Why, mother dear, the fretting, 'tis for them that stay 
behind 

And hear the music die away to silence on the wind ; 

And it's always glory beckoning the happy ones who go, 

And who'll come back some splendid day triumphant 
o'er the foe ; 

Then what a Christmas-keeping, from the prairies to 
the lakes, 

From the pine-lands to the palm-lands, where'er old 
ocean breaks 

In surf and thunder on our coasts, what Christmas- 
keeping then^ 

When Columbia calls her soldiers back ; great mother 
of strong men ! 

Now, shut your eyes, sweet mother, just shut your 

eyes and sleep. 
No doubt the mother of the Christ her thoughtful 

watch would keep 
When she saw him going from her and she could not 

do a thing — 
Nor take much comfort from that hour when she 

heard the angels sing. 
Perhaps she never heard them, on that night when he 

was born. 
And she lay all wan and tired, in the faint and roseate 

morn ; 
But, born to be a Saviour, that was all the joy she 

knew ; 
And, in a lesser way of course, such joy may come to 

you. 
For, not for self, and not for pelf, but at the country's 

need, 
Our Willie went, at duty's call, to do, to dare, to heed, 
And, w^herever floats the flag to-day, and far as he may 

roam. 
He carries with him, mother dear, the conscience of 

his home. 

134 



Trustful To-morrows 

When the new year knocks at the door it is 
well for "US to remember some of the old words 
which have ever been the consolations and 
delights of the saints : "Lord, thou hast been our 
dwelling place in all generations/^ "The Lord 
shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in/^ 
"I, the Lord, have called thee in righteousness, 
and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee/^ 
"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose 
mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in 

thee/' 

"Workman of God ! O ! lose not heart, 

But learn what God is like, 
And in the darkest battle field 

Thou shalt know where to strike." 

The daily routine of the household apparently 
so tranquil has its pitfalls, its conflicts, and its 
temptations. To keep one's voice sweet, one's 
face bright, one's will steady, one's patience 
unperturbed, in the arena of the home, in the 
presence of one's own family, is no light task. 
Home joy is a precious thing and should be 
guarded. 

"If I had known in the morning 
How wearily all the day 
The words unkind would trouble my mind, 
I said, when you went away, 

135 



Cheerful To-days axd 

I had been more careful, darling, 
Nor given you needless pain ; 
But we vex our own with look and tone 
We might never take back again. 

''For though in the quiet evening 

You should give me the kiss of peace, 
Yet it well might be that never for me 
The pain of the heart should cease. 
How many go forth at morning 
Who never come home at night ; 
And hearts have broken for harsh words spoken 
That sorrow can ne'er set right. 

"We have careful thought for the stranger, 
And smiles for the sometime guest ; 
But yet for our own the bitter tone, 
Though we love our own the best ; 
Ah, lip with the curve impatient, 
Ah, brow with the look of scorn, 
'Twere a cruel fate were the night too late 
To undo the work of morn." 

Away back in A. D. 700 one of God's dear 
children wrote this little prayer^ which is appro- 
priate for working days and holidays alike : 

^^Grant ns^ Lord^ to pass this day in glad- 
ness and peace, without stumbling and without 
stain; that, reaching the eventide victorious 
over all temptation, we may praise thee, the 
eternal God, who art blessed, and dost govern 
all things, world without end. Amen.'' 

The wedding anniversaries are very precious 

in the happy home. I was a privileged guest 

136 



Trustful To-morrows 

recently at the fortieth wedding day of a dear 
friend to whom God had given nine dear chil- 
dren and in whose circle there is not yet one 
vacant chair. Many of the guests at the wed- 
ding dinner had been present at the bridal^ 
and they exchanged reminiscences and renewed 
felicitations. The merriment was nnclouded, 
and it was hallowed by the felt and recognized 

presence of the Master at the feast. 

137 



Cheekeul To-days and 



CHAPTEE XV 

The Plant Hearths-ease 

When one sees the serene faces the Friends 
carry under their dove colored poke bonnets, 
and observes how noble and dignified is the 
vrriting of time on those gentle brows, one is 
aware that in their bosoms they have been car- 
rying the plant hearths-ease. This little herb 
grows not in the soil of pride and flourishes not 
amid arrogance and contempt. Bunyan tells 
ns that it is oftenest found in the Vallev of 
Humiliation. ^^It is fat ground'^ there, he says, 
^^and, as you see, consisteth much in meadows ; 
and if a man were to come here in the summer 
time, as we do now, if he knew not anything 
before thereof, and if he also delighted himself 
in the sight of his eyes, he might see that that 
would be delightful to him. Behold, how green 
this valley is ! also how beautified with lilies ! I 
have also known many laboring men that have 
got good estates in this Valley of Humiliation 
(for God resisteth the proud, but gives more, 

more grace to the humble) ; for indeed it is a 

138 



Trustful To-mokrows 

very fruitful soil, and doth bring forth by hand- 
fuls. Some also have wished that the next way 
to their Fathers house were here, that they 
might be troubled no more with either hills or 
mountains to go over; but the way is the way, 
and there's an end/' 

^^Xow/' goes on the poet dreamer, ^'^as they 
were going along and talking, they espied a 
boy feeding his father's sheep. The boy was 
in very mean clothes, but of a very fresh and 
well favored countenance ; and as he sat by him- 
self, he sung/' And these were the words : 

"He that is down needs fear no fall, 

He that is low no pride ; 
He that is humble ever shall 

Have God to be his guide. 
I am content with what I have, 

Little be it or much ; 
And, Lord, contentment still I crave, 

Because thou savest such. 
Fullness to such a burden is 

As go on pilgrimage : 
Here little, and hereafter bliss, 

Is best from age to age." 

^^I will dare to say,'' said Greatheart, ^^that 

this bov lives a merrier life, and wears more of 

that herb called heart's-ease in his bosom, than 

he that is clad in silk and velvet." 

To have the perfume of the plant heart's-ease 

139 



Cheerful To-days and 

about one all the while one must cultivate a 
spirit of trust. She who doubts God and his 
continual loving kindness will have no heart's- 
ease. She who is careful and troubled about 
health, about money, about the morrow, either 
for herself or for her loved ones, will never have 
peace for her comrade. She who is straining 
to keep up appearances, unwilling to live 
plainly, to dress plainly, to take an incon- 
spicuous seat at the banquet, will not get away 
from care. 

Then, too, she who carries her loads for her- 
self, or for her home people and her business 
associates, to the cross> and carries the loads 
away again, will not know the balm of hearts- 
ease. Whoever kneels to the Lord in contrite 
prayer, and accepts the promises literally, will 
bear ease about with him, wherever he may 
walk, whatever he may do or bear. 

William Law, mystic and preacher of the gos- 
pel more than a hundred years ago, living in 
Putney, England, found out the secret of 
heart's-ease. ^^When things seemed to go ill 
with the cause of truth and righteousness, in 
controversv or in actual life, Law fell back at 

once on the assurance that God's ways must be a 

140 



Trustful To-morrows 

great deep to the mind of man. And when 
hurts and wrongs^ crosses and vexations^ came 
to himself Law knew himself well enough to see 
why God sent them or permitted them to come. 
^You are here/ he said to himself, Ho have no 
tempers and no self-designs, and no self -ends, 
but to fill some place and act some part in strict 
conformity and thankful resignation to the 
divine pleasure. Begin, therefore, in the small- 
est matters and most ordinary occasions and 
accustom your mind to the daily exercise of this 
pious temper in the lowest occurrences of life. 
And when a contempt, an affront, a little injury, 
a loss or a disappointment, or the smallest events 
in every day continually raise your mind to God 
in proper acts of resignation, then you may 
justly hope that you shall be numbered among 
those who are resigned and thankful to God in 
the greatest trials and afflictions.^ ^^ 
Said Geo. Klingle: 

"God broke our years to hours and days that 
Hour by hour, 
And day by day, 
Just going on a little way. 
We might be able all along 
To keep quite strong. 
141 



Cheerful To-days and 

Should all the weight of life 
Be laid across our shoulders, and the future, rife 
With woe and struggle, meet us face to face 
At just one place, 
We could not go ; 
Our feet would stop ; and so 
God lays a little on us every day, 
And never, I believe, on all the way 
Will burdens bear so deep 
Or pathways lie so steep 
But we can go if, by God's power. 
We only bear the burden of the hour." 

How shall we carry heart's-ease to the be- 
reaved? How except by expressing our sym- 
pathy? ^^I never know just what to say to peo- 
ple who are in sorrow so I never say anything, if 
I can help it. And the more I feel the less I 
can say. I can write a note of condolence quite 
easily, for the stilted phrases slip easily from 
the pen, even when I know that they are useless, 
for they never comfort the least bit. But when 
I am face to face with bereavement I am dumb, 
although my heart may ache. Still, it makes 
little difference; words don't help people in 
grief. And, if they did, all I could say would 
be, ^I am sorry.' '^ 

As if that were not the best thing to say! 

That simple phrase carries with it more true 

sympathy than dozens of stilted expressions. 

142 



Trustful To-morrows 

When we were in sorrow and felt as if we were 
numbed by the awful loneliness of our grief, 
that seemed ours and ours only, what did it 
mean to us when our friend came, and putting 
her arms about us, sobbed, "0, my dear, I am so 
sorry ! so sorry V^ That genuine, unpremedi- 
tated outburst brought sympathy that softened 
grief, although nothing could lessen it. It is 
a mistake to think that so-called letters of con- 
dolence do no good. Of course they cannot re- 
lieve sorrow, but to the grief-stricken there is 
great comfort in knowing that somebody cares ; 
that the thoughts and prayers of friends are 
with her who walks in the Valley of the Shadow 
of Death. And to one in sorrow the world in 
general seems such a heartless, careless place! 

Let us not feel that, because dozens of other 
people have written letters or spoken phrases of 
pity to the bereaved friend, our little note or 
word is unnecessary. It may be just the touch 
of sympathy that will soften the rebellious grief 
and bring much-needed tears ; it may be just the 
drop of sweet in the cup of bitterness that, but 
for that tiny drop, would be intolerable. 

A thoughtful writer has bidden us ^^cultivate 

the undergrowth of little pleasures.^^ She says : 

143 



Cheerful To-days and 

^^Tliere are the things that can be done in odd 
minutes. They need not necessarily be simply 
profitable. It is highly edifying to know how 
some people have improved their minds in frag- 
ments of time, but to an overworked mortal 
what a weariness it is ! Momentary snatches of 
good times are not a purposeless waste. Life's 
larger deeds and duties are usually hyphenated 
by some little thing. Let the in-betweens be 
pleasant, if possible. 

^^A busy housewife, on mending day, took a 
choice book to the sewing-room, and after slip- 
ping the needle in and out of the yawning hole 
in a stocking a certain number of times she read 
a delightful page of the story. Her work was 
foremost, and was duly finished, while a page at 
a time was not much of the book, but she made 
the most of the little undergrowth of pleasure 
and found it refreshing. 

'^If it is possible to manage between times 
the brief informal visit, or bit of neighborliness, 
Tfhere one cannot take a day for social inter- 
change nor put one's self in array for a grand 
function, cultivate the undergrowth of socia- 
hility. If a favorite accomplishment must be 

relegated to chinks and corners of time, so be it, 

144 



Trustful To-morrows 

but let it fill the chinks. Touch the piano keys 
in the twilight, or redeem a season somehow for 
taking up the brush, or the small implements 
of fancy work, if that is a pleasure. Keep the 
pen within reach, and let the giving and taking 
of pleasure in a friendly letter be a common 
thing, not a formidable task like the writing of 
a state paper. Your friends can find state 
papers in the public library. They want to 
know your common goings and comings, and 
what you are thinking about, what you are read- 
ing and what you are making, how your new 
frock looks, and how the last recipe 5^ou tried 
came out. They want to know of your remem- 
brance and regard, and the impulsive rhetoric 
of the heart is better for telling this than any 
studied eloquence. Those who do not cultivate 
this undergrowth of little pleasures in friendly 
letters, after the fashion of Cowper's ideal, who 
^loved talking letters dearly,^ do not know what 
they miss. There is such refreshment in the 
writing and the receiving that one sometimes 
feels moved to repeat the assertion that 

*The very dearest and sweetest thing 
Is the sound in the house of the postman's ring.* 

145 



Cheerful To-days and 

"Under the severely useful and profitable 
crop of commonplace deeds and duties, as in- 
distinguishable from each other, perhaps, as 
crowding cornstalks or swaying wheatblades, 
there is an undergrowth of innocent satisfac- 
tion in the ability to do the work, the growing 
facility in it, and in the mere fact of accom- 
plishing it. Take the good of this comfortable 
feeling as you go along. Even under distaste- 
ful toils pleasant little things grow up, and a 
little sprig of content, planted, watered, culti- 
vated sincerely, will blossom into pleasure by 
and by." 

Eev. Dr. C. H. Parkhurst tells us that 
"We should show ourselves neither philo- 
sophic nor Christian by declining to enjoy a 
landscape that is beauteous in summer on the 
ground that it is certain to become bleak in win- 
ter. You can bless God for the flower that 
blossoms at the roadside in June although you 
may know that no flower will be there next 
December. Indeed, by affecting to make light 
of the uncertain mercies that come to us and 
stay but a little while, we are certain to put our- 
selves a little farther beyond the reach of mer- 
cies that may come to us and stay a great while 

14G 



Trustful To-morrows 

and always. One of the saddest things that 
parents ever say about a child that God has 
loaned them only a few years and then taken 
back is that they are afraid that God did it to 
punish them for having loved the child so pas- 
sionately ; as though any gift — most of all such 
a gift — if only cherished with a heart that is at 
the same time mindful of the blessed Author 
of the gift could have any other effect than to 
make real and dear the unseen world out of 
which it is come and the unseen hand by whom 
it was bestowed/^ 

After all^ he has the most of that sweet plant 
called heart 's-ease who has most of tender com- 
munion with the Master. To lean on the bosom 
of Jesus is to know the sweetness of his grace ; 
to hear him say in the dusk and in the dew, in 
the starlight and in the sunlight, ^^I have called 
you friend.^^ 

Then may we say : 

"I can never doubt his goodness ; 

I must ever trust his love. 
By a cord that cannot sever 

I am bound to my home above. 

"Henceforward on my journey 

I therefore walk by faith, 
Till he give me fuller vision 

On the other side of death." 
147 



Cheerful To-days and 



CHAPTER XVI 

The Easter Joy 
A Golden Way 

From Christmas unto Easter 
There leads a golden way; 

By solemn stars 'tis lighted, 
By angels watched each day. 

We who have heard the Master 
Say, "Rise, and follow me," 

Are swift the silver milestones 
Of that dear way to see. 

We walk again with Jesus 
^ Through those first hidden years 
Ere yet he knew the anguish 
Of struggle, toil and tears. 

We tread the steep hill passes, 
We stand beside the wave. 

And o'er us is the blessing 
Of him who came to save. 

By beds of pain we meet him ; 

He gives the blind their sight ; 
In lonely mountain places 

He tarries oft by night. 

And ever where he wanders, 

In shadow or in sun, 
We catch a gleam of glory 

From God's most holy One. 
148 





"Last at the Cross, and Earliest at the Tomb." 



Trustful To-mokrows 

And when they cry "Hosanna," 

Or "Crucify" they cry, 
Alike he wears the beauty 

Of God's own Son most high. 

For, swift he came from heaven 

With sinful men to dwell, 
And sweetest name he weareth 

Is aye "Immanuel !" 

No grave could keep him captive, 
Nor death could hold him fast ; 

All whom he saves shall with him 
Inherit life at last. 

By solemn stars love-lighted, 
By angels watched each day, 

From Christmas unto Easter 
Is just one golden way. 

One day at noon during the latter part of 
Lent, in a cold winter, I found myself in the 
neighborhood of a church on Broadway, New 
York, where through open doors a stream of 
people was passing in to a little service. The 
invitation to leave the throng and bustle of the 
street and spend a quiet half-hour in a worship- 
ing assembly could not be resisted, and, enter- 
ing, I found myself one of a large congregation 
among whom were many men, young and old; 
women of all ranks, from ladies richly and 
fashionably attired to women whose clothing 

marked them as tpilers, some of them very poor. 
11 149 



Cheerful To-days and 

It was a pleasant experience to join this sanc- 
tuary throng, and as I left the church, com- 
forted and helped by the song, the prayers, the 
little sermon and the watchword chosen from 
the Bible, I felt glad that Christians are more 
and more inclining their hearts to keep with 
special attention the services of Lent. 

I could not agree with an editorial which I 
read shortly after, in one of the daily papers, in 
which severe reflections were made on the de- 
clining piety of the Church of to-day. We live 
in a material age ; an age of fierce business com- 
petition; a time when men struggle to amass 
money, when the contrasts between rich and 
poor are more sharply drawn than of old, when 
the besetting sin of the day is to bring matters 
to the test of human reason rather than to go 
in faith to the mercy seat and accept what God 
gives us there. But I remember the text of that 
day: ^^I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is 
there anything too hard for me T^ I see press- 
ing in with insistent energy upon the Church a 
great and increasing throng of young men and 
women, student volunteers, who are ready and 
willing to give themselves to serve the Lord in 

any land where he may want them. I am aware 

150 



Trustful To-morrows 

that there is a large and increasing army of 
men and women who quietly read their Bibles 
and earnestly pray, and I do not believe that the 
Church is losing its hold upon the world, nor 
that Christ is deserting his own people. 

After the forty days of Lent comes the -dawn 
of the Easter morning. Once more with flow- 
ers and hymns of praise we enter our holy 
places; once more we hear sounding over every 
'Open grave, and hushing every rebellious 
thought in our hearts and soothing every grief, 
the words of him who still says to every one of 
us, ^^I am the Eesurrection and the Life ; he that 
believeth in me, though he were dead yet shall 
he live.'^ Because our blessed Captain tasted 
death for everv one of us, and himself took on 
his pale lips its utmost bitterness, the cup which 
the death angel holds to our lips is filled with 
the sweetness and flavor of everlasting life. 
This is the great joy of Easter. More and 
more, as we go on traveling the pilgrim road, 
we are conscious that it is but a road leading to 
another and an endless home. Along the road 
there are beautiful surprises. Friendship is 
ours, and domestic bliss; the dear love of kin- 
dred; the sweetness of companionship; the de- 

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Cheerful To-days and 

light of standing shoulder to shoulder with 
comrades ; the glory of service. But this is not 
our rest, and we are going on to that place where 
the beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by 
him and where they go no more out forever. 

Somehow Easter always carries with it more 
of heaven than any other of the great anniver- 
saries of the Christian year. In its first bright 
dawn the heavens were opened and the angels 
came down to comfort the weeping women and 
the disciples, mourning their Lord at the sepul- 
cher, with those ecstatic words, "He is not here ; 
he is risen V' It is more than a fancy, it is a 
precious fact, that the angels still come back to 
console the mourner, to strengthen the doubt- 
ing, and to give Christ's own people the blessed 
assurance that he is with them still. 

The festival of Easter comes to us at a pro- 
pitious time, for, lo, the winter is past ; the rain 
is over and gone; the time of the singing of 
birds is come; and the voice of the turtle is 
heard in our land. Winter, with its rigor and 
cold, its ice and frost and inclement blasts, its 
tempests on land and sea, is an emblem of war- 
fare; its silence and sternness ally it to grief. 

Spring comes dancing and fluttering in with 

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Trustful To-morrows 

flowers and music and the blithe step of child- 
hood. Her signs are evident before she is really 
here herself. First come the bluebirds, har- 
bingers of a host; a little later there will be 
wrens and robins and orioles, and all the troop 
which make the woods musical and build so- 
ciably around our country homes. 

Then the flowers will come. Happy are they 
who shall watch their whole procession, from 
the pussy-willow in March to the last blue gen- 
tian in October. We decorate our churches at 
Easter with the flnest spoils of the hothouse — 
lilies, roses, palms, azaleas; nothing is too 
costly, nothing too lavish to be brought to the 
sanctuary or carried to the cemetery. Friend 
sends to friend the fragrant bouquet or the 
growing plant with the same tender significance 
which is evinced in the Christmas gifts, which 
carry from one heart to another a sweet mes- 
sage of love. 

But God is giving us the Easter flowers in 

little hidden nooks in the forests, down bv the 

corners of fences, in the sheltered places on the 

edges of the brook, and there we flnd the violet, 

the arbutus and other delicate blossoms which 

lead the van for the great army of nature^s 

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Cheerful To-days and 

efflorescence. The first flowers are more del- 
icately tinted and of shyer look and more 
ephemeral fragrance than those which come 
later. They are the Easter flowers. Later on 
we shall have millions of blossoms and more 
birds than we can count; now in the garden 
and the field we have enough to remind us that 
the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, 
the time of the singing of birds is come. 

If any of us have been grieving over our own 
lack, over our sinful departure from God or over 
the loss of dear ones, let us at Easter forget the 
past, put our hand in that of our risen Lord, 
accept the sweetness of his voice and the glad- 
ness of his presence as he comes into our homes, 
and say, thankfully, as we hear his "Peace be 
unto you,^^ "Lord, we are thine at this Easter 
time; we give ourselves to thee in a fullness 
which we have never known before. We are 
thine. Thine to use as thou wilt ; thine to fill 
with blessing; thine to own. Take us. Lord, 
and so possess us with thyself that our waste 
places shall be glad, and the wilderness of our 
lives shall blossom as the rose.'' Such a prayer 
will find its way upward, and return to us in 

wonderful answers of blessing from the Lord. 

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Trustful To-morrows 

After the chill of the winter — 
After the frost and rime — 

The dance of the leaves, 

The song in the eaves, 

And the waves like bells a-chime. 

After the wide snow fleeces 

The green of the springing grass. 

The buds uncreased 

And the bees' sweet feast. 

And the ripple of winds that pass. 
155 



Cheerful To-days and 



CHAPTER XYII 

Mornings with the Bible 

For most of iis mornings with the Bible are 
rare. A few verses hastily read, or a chapter 
or two in the interval before breakfast, take up 
all the time we can give to the Word before the 
inflowing tide of the world is upon us. Yet 
few studies are so remunerative, few occupa- 
tions are so delightful, and few duties are so 
imperative as daily attention to the Scriptures, 
and once convinced of the obligation, and in 
love with the engagement, most of us will so 
order our day that some part of it shall method- 
ically be given to this employment. 

^^I want my Bible to be a living book,'^ said a 
lady one day. ^^Yes, but it is already living,'^ 
was her friend's response. "It is you who are 
not responsive.'^ 

Just as in organ and piano the music lies 
asleep, waiting the awakening touch of the per- 
former's hand, so in chapter and text the sweet 
melodies lie, ready to start into choral and re- 
frain when you come to them with loving and 

15G 



Trustful To-morrows 

listening heart. To the color-blind the delicate 
shades of beauty in the spring or the autumnal 
landscape are not discernible; the lilacs and 
pinks and yellows and greens fail to show their 
wonderful variety of tint and hue. There are 
those who are dull of ear and dim of eye^ they 
neither hear nor see^ when the Bible is the book 
which is under their notice. It is to them 
merely an old volume to which they pay the trib- 
ute of a traditional reverence, or they regard it 
as an addition to the furnishing of the house, 
or else because their mothers loved it they some- 
times lay upon it a caressing hand. But it is 
not their Bible, their daily food, their cup of 
cold water, their staff and stay, their very dear- 
est dear of books. 

We are bringing up, we in our Christian 
homes are bringing up, a generation of young 
people who have no intimate acquaintance with 
the Bible ; who do not feel the obligation of its 
claim upon their thought and attention. Its 
precepts are not familiar to them by frequent 
repetition. Our hurried modern life, with its 
insistent clamor of trains and its schedules of 
business hours, has pushed the family altar out 
of many a home, so that children do not, as of 






Cheerful To-days and 

old^ twice a day read or listen to the reading of 
the Bible in household worship. The old Bible 
heroes, Moses, David, Samuel, Nehemiah, the 
Bible women, Euth, Hannah, Deborah, Esther, 
are not any longer household words, and the 
sequence of the different books has dropped 
away from children's education. People re- 
mark glibly that they like the New Testament 
but do not care for the Old; which is very like 
saying that they like to live in the house but 
prefer to leave out the foundation. Of the 
treasures of history, of poetry, of learning, and 
of pure literature in our sacred Scriptures many 
persons are to-day pitifully and shamefully 
ignorant. 

'Now we may amend this by setting aside our 
daily hour — by preference a morning hour — for 
the reading of the Word. We shall love it only 
as we read it. We may do this by ourselves, or 
we may seek one or two congenial friends and 
together we may read and think upon what the 
Holy Spirit has set down for the instruction 
of the world through its every age. 

A good plan is to take a single book and read 

it through at a sitting. Another good plan is to 

select a character and follow him through his 

158 



Trustful To-morrows 

career. If we choose to study the life of our 
Lord we may begin by looking at him first 
through the prophecies which foretold his com- 
ings and then we may read the four stories of 
his earthly way as related by four men who lived 
with him and loved him. Then, following the 
closing chapters of St. John, we may read the 
history of the early church as given in the Book 
of Acts of the Apostles ; then take up the letters 
sent by these good ministers to the congrega- 
tions scattered abroad, so getting into our hearts 
true missionary fervor. Then, studying He- 
brews, we may compare it with the Pentateuch, 
and musing and dreaming we m^y, with the 
blessed disciple whom Jesus loved, have a 
Eevelation of the life to come. 

Only, let us read and study the divine Word. 

The ^^Literary Digest,^^ some months ago, 
gave an interesting account of an experiment 
by which Dr. George A. Coe, professor of phi- 
losophy in ISTorthwestern University, tested the 
Scriptural knowledge of certain college stu- 
dents. To a company of one hundred students 
he gave the following questions, requesting 
answers in writing : 

1. What is the Pentateuch? 

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Cheerful To-days and 

2. What is the higher criticism of the Scrip- 
tures ? 

3. Does the book of Jude belong to the N"ew 
Testament^ or to the Old ? 

4. Name one of the patriarchs of the Old 
Testament. 

5. N'ame one of the judges of the Old Testa- 
ment. 

6. Name three of the kings of Israel. 

7. Name three prophets. 

8. Give one of the Beatitudes. 

9. Quote a verse from the Letter to the 
Eomans. 

The answers received vs^ere all signed by the 
writers, and Professor Coe expresses his belief 
that they were, ^Vithout exception, sincere.^^ 
In marking the answers as correct or incorrect 
Professor Coe put in the former class all that, 
showed even a distant approach to definite 
knowledge, whether technical or only popular. 
He says (in an article in the ^^Christian Advo- 
cate^') that ninety-six papers were returned, 
of which eight answered the nine questions cor- 
rectly ; thirteen papers answered eight questions 
correctly, eleven answered seven, five answered 

six, nine answered five, twelve answered four, 

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Trustful To-morrows 

eleven answered three, thirteen answered two, 
eleven answered one, and three answered none. 
The number giving a correct answer to the first 
question was sixty, to the second, sixteen ; to the 
third, fifty-six; to the fourth, sixty-one; to the 
fifth, forty-five ; to the sixth, forty-seven ; to the 
seventh, fifty-two; to the eighth, seventy-six; 
to the ninth, thirtv-one. 

Ninety-six papers, with nine answers on each, 
give ns a total of eight hundred and sixty-four 
answers. The total number of correct answers 
was four hundred and forty-four, a little over 
one-half. 

Nearly two-thirds of them knew what the 
Pentateuch is, but only one-sixth of them knew 
what the ^^higher criticism^^ is; and only one- 
third could quote a single verse from the Epistle 
to the Eomans. 

Would it not be well for us, in test of our- 
selves as well as to induce our young friends, to 
submit in a similar way to some such trial of our 

accurate knowledge of the Bible ? 

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Cheerful To-days and 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Sweet Hour of Prayer 

^^0 I-/ORD of life and Lord of love, love us into 
life and give ns life to love thee. Grant us life 
enough to put life into all things ; that when we 
travel o'er this part of our life, and it seems 
but dust and barrenness, we may be of those who 
hope in thee. Touch this barrenness till all 
things bloom. Touch those of us whose life is 
barrener than it need be, lacking knowledge and 
beauty, filled with petty interests and foolish 
cares. Lord, forgive us that our life is so poor, 
and grant us the thoughts of God, that we may 
be enabled for the time to come to make this 
very desert blossom as the rose. Grant that 
in us, short-lived, vexed with cares, hungry, 
thirsty, dying, the spirit of God may so come 
that the beauty of the Lord our God may be 
upon us, and the work of our hands be estab- 
lished through Jesus Christ our Lord.^^ 

This prayer of George Dawson breathes the 

desire of everv soul that, out of want and weak- 

ness and penury, turns to the Lord for help and 

162 



Trustful To-morrows 

strength and affluent bounty. How should bur- 
dens be borne^ how should sins be pardoned^ how 
should wisdom be found, if there were no still 
hour when we might seek the Lord? 

In our extremity is always God^s opportunity. 
Strangely do we limit our Lord's goodness and 
power when we hesitate to carry everything to 
him in prayer ; our spiritual needs not only, but 
our temporal requirements. Our food and rai- 
ment, the roof over our heads, the shoes for the 
children's feet, the health we find failing in our 
loved ones or ourselves, the journey we wish to 
take, the choice of a school or a college for son 
or daughter, the business decision we must 
make, these are legitimate objects of prayer. 
Our Father knoweth of what we have need be- 
fore we ask him, yet he says, ^^Ask, and it shall 
be given; seek, and ye shall find;" and desires 
that we inquire of him concerning his will. 

All prayer, to be real, must be genuine; sin- 
cere; the utterance of the heart. It must be 
believing prayer. It must be penitent prayer. 
Also it must be made in the dear name of 
Christ, and in submission to the will of God. 
^^K'ot my will, but thine,'^ cries the devout soul. 

Father John, that fine old mystic of the 

163 



Cheerful To-days and 

Greek church, says, "Only feel truly and sin- 
cerely your need of that for which you pray, and 
believe that it comes from God, and you will 
obtain anything and everything. For with God 
all things are possible. Whether you are sit- 
ting down, or walking abroad, or thinking, or 
writing, or working; whether you are well or 
ill, at home or out, on land or on sea, be contin- 
ually assured that God at that moment is wholly 
with you; that he hears the finest breathings 
and beatings of your hearts ; and that he listens 
to hear and help you. Has he not said to you 
that he waits to be gracious to you? Forget, 
deny, despair of anything and everything but 
that. Eemember that for Omnipotence noth- 
ing is difficult, nor for Love a trouble or a task. 
All things, therefore, whatsoever you shall ask 
in prayer, believing, you shall surely receive.^^ 
Praj^er is not always selfish asking. Some, 
and a large part of it, is intercession for others ; 
and whoso intercedes for the soul of his friend 
follows closely the example and obeys the com- 
mand of the Master. Some of it is adoration. 
Some of it is praise. Some of it is just a sim- 
ple, silent, sweet drawing nigh unto God. Of 

one thing may we be assured : that only as we 

164 



Trustful To-morrows 

do often, and closely, and earnestly, give our- 
selves into God's care, committing our way unto 
him, asking his direction, floating out upon the 
infinite sea of his grace, shall we grow in the 
Christian life. To pray is to think of Jesus; 
to think of Jesus is to become acquainted with 
God. 

There is a little picture poem by Francis 
Fisher Browne which often returns to me when 
I remember those who have parted with their 
childhood's simple faith, those who no longer 
kneel down at morning or at night to say their 

prayers : 

Upon the white sea sand 
There sat a pilgrim band 
Telling the losses that their lives had known^ 
While evening waned away 
From breezy cliff and bay, 
' And the strong tide went out with weary moan. 

One spake, with quivering lip. 

Of a fair freighted ship 
With all his household to the deep gone down ; 

But one had wilder woe 

For a fair face long ago 
Lost in the darker depths of a great town. 

There were who mourned their youth 

With a most loving ruth 
For its brave hopes and memories ever green ; 

And one upon the West 

Turned an eye that would not rest 
For far-off hills whereon its joy had been. 
12 165 



Cheerful To-days and 

Some talked of vanished gold, 

Some of proud honors told, 
Some spake of friends that were their trust no more ; 

And one of a green grave 

Beside a foreign wave, 
That made him sit so lonely on the shore. 

But when their tales were done 

There spake among them one, 
A stranger, seeming from all sorrow free — 

**Sad losses have ye met 

But mine is heavier yet. 
For a believing heart hath gone from me." 

*'Alas !" these pilgrims said, 

**For the living and the dead. 
For fortune's cruelty, for love's sure cross. 

For the wrecks of land and sea ! 

But, however it came to thee. 
Thine, stranger, is life's last and heaviest loss." 

Whatever else the world may give it can give 

lis no better thing than the hour of prayer. 

Whatever it may take^ it cannot rob us of peace 

if that dear hour is still our refuge. 

166 



Trustful To-morrows 



CHAPTER XIX 

Growing Old 

Perhaps the keenest pang a woman ever feels 
is in the day she realizes that her youth has 
gone. She seldom reaches this knowledge with- 
out some external sign or token. It is in the 
frankness of a friend who^ meeting her^ after 
the lapse of years^ observes her altered looks^ 
and comments on them^ ^^You have changed. 
I would never have known you V^ It is in the 
over-ofScious courtesy of the fellow passenger 
on a railway train or cable car^ whO;, yielding 
her a seat^, kindly explains that he cannot suffer 
an old lady to stand. It is in the reflection of 
her mirror^ which shows her gray hair and a 
hollowing cheek, or in the merciless fidelity of 
the camera, which reveals differences she had 
not remarked. Yet, once confessed, once ad- 
mitted on friendly terms, age has its advan- 
tages. The elderly woman may go unchallenged 
wherever she will. She may form her friend- 
ships on an equal plane with people older and 
younger than herself. Boys and girls come to 

167 



Cheerful To-days and 

her for counsel. The love affairs of the family 
are related to her, and as under her silver hair 
she has a warm heart, often absurdly young 
though nobody suspects it, she is a wise and 
a safe confidante. 

Often for many years the middle aged and 
elderly woman enjoys firm health and is the 
possessor of vigor to which her youth was a 
stranger. She shrinks from no undertaking, 
she is afraid of no task; she goes gaily across 
the continent or around the globe. You find 
her peering into Dakota dug-outs and Indian 
tepees ; she is admitted into Hindu zenanas and 
Japanese homes. She understands life, and 
reads other women by her own wide experience. 

If she is married, and her husband, growing 
old with her, has kept pace with her in mind 
and thought — though it sometimes happens 
that a woman, having more leisure, outgrows 
her hard-working husband — then the two in the 
serenity of their lifers evening are as happy as 
two children. They have lived and loved to- 
gether. They may sit often and long in silence, 
having no need of speech : there is an inti- 
macy which depends not on language for 

interpretation. 

108 



Trustful To-morrows 

Growing old is less a terror than it used to be, 
for less than formerly are old people laid upon 
the shelf. The well-meant but mistaken kind- 
ness of their juniors is apt to deprive aged mem- 
bers of a household of the work they like to do, 
and they gradually feel that they are first unim- 
portant and next encumbrances. No greater 
blunder is ever made than that which thus 
grieves persons who, after lives of much activity, 
feel themselves crowded out and pushed aside 
by the newer generation. 

Augustus Hare has an inimitable sketch of a 
clever old lady, one Mrs. Duncan Stewart, who 
until long past eighty held a sort of social court. 
Of her pains and aches this sturdy gentlewoman 
refused to speak. "Take care,^^ she would say 
to a contemporary who had a tendency thus to 
complain, "or you will become that most dread- 
ful of all things, a self-observant valetudina- 
rian.^' It would be well for everyone to make 
this admirable rule his or her own. We gain 
nothing by discussing our maladies, and we 
often bring upon ourselves the very physical 
pangs we dread by fixing them on our mental 
retina. 

Of two things those who are growing old 

169 



Cheerful To-days and 

should be extremely careful. One is to neglect 
no little point of decorum. Manners are as 
beautiful in age as in youth, and no burden of 
years can really excuse brusqueness, or harsh- 
ness, or inattention to courtesy. A lady told 
me of a visit she paid to a great-uncle one hun- 
dred and one years of age. When she was tak- 
ing her leave her aged relative said, ^^My dear 
niece, I beg that you will pardon me, in that the 
infirmities of my age prevent my accompanying 
you to the door.^^ Was not that beautiful? To 
a gentleman of ninety a young woman carried 
an offering of lovely flowers. "How kind and 
sweet,^^ he said, "is this thoughtf ulness of yours. 
You, so young, bring roses to me, so old V^ 

Then, let the old lady and the old gentleman 
dress as neatly and with as much elegance as 
possible. Careful dress, clothing as rich as the 
purse can afford, is more necessary to age than 
to youth. When I was a girl I had a bonnet 
trimmed with pink roses. Said a dear old gen- 
tlewoman, "You do not need those trimmings, 
dear; the roses are in your cheeks. Wait till 
you are older, to put on the gayer dress.^^ 

The old should associate with the young, and 

should have tolerance for the views of the latter 

170 



Trustful To-morrows 

while trenchantly holding fast to their own 
prerogatives. I know an octogenarian who still 
practices successfully his learned profession, 
keeping abreast with younger men and going 
to Europe, summer after summer, alone, for 
purposes of recreation and study. Another, 
not so far from ninety, comes from a country 
home three times a week to read in a great 
library, traveling eighty miles a day for the pur- 
pose. These men have known how to grow old 
gracefully. They are of those who prove to us, 
with Browning, that ^'^the best is yet to be.^^ 

Old people are precious links with yesterday. 
When I talk with one whose memory goes back 
to days when iSTew York society found its center 
on the Battery, and Chicago was a mere wilder- 
ness with Indians pitching wigwams beside its 
lake, the past grows very vivid. 

On the path the old are treading we shall soon 

follow them. Of one thing we may be sure. 

Time is the great conqueror, and imperceptibly 

his gentle hand is snatching away the youth 

from us all. 

171 



Cheerful To-days and 



CHAPTER XX 
Home Awaiting 

It is the dearest word in our language, that 
sweet word Home. Born of our deepest need, 
answering to a responsive chord in our nature, 
whatever the accident of our environment or the 
peculiarity of our training there is a homing 
instinct which sends us back from the farthest 
wandering on the face of the earth to the old 
fireside and the mother's chair. When annu- 
ally we of this land keep our Thanksgiving 
feast, every train across the continent, every 
ship that sails the sea, bears freight of loving 
hearts, carries home again the men and women 
who, from business, study and pleasure, turn 
yearningly and wistfully to the place where they 
played in childhood. 

All through our changeful days we are bound 

by strong and slender though often invisible 

threads to the home of our bringing up, to the 

earliest associations. Yet death is all the while 

slowly or swiftly obliterating earthly scenes, and 

men come and go, and families pass away, and 

172 



Trustful To-morrows 

it is ever true, here in this world, of everything 
we see and hear, that the wind passeth over it 
and it is gone, and that the place which knows 
US to-day may soon know ns no more. Eealizing 
this more and more as our experiences multiply 
and a deeper note comes into our lives, we look 
forward to the home which shall abide, to the 
immortal land ^^conjubilant with song/^ 

"Jerusalem the golden, 

With milk and honey blest, 
Beneath thy contemplation 

Sink heart and voice opprest. 
I know not, O, I know not, 

What social joys are there, 
What radiancy of glory, 

What bliss beyond compare. 

"There is the throne of David, 
And there, from care released, 

The song of them that triumph. 
The shout of them that feast." 

Our dear Lord, leaving his disciples lonely 

and bewildered, not knowing what they should 

do without his presence and the comfort of his 

gentle strength, said, "In my Father's house are 

many mansions. I go to prepare a place for 

you/^ There and then he named the home 

awaiting us after the trials and storms of this 

world; it is the Father's house, and where else 

173 



Cheerful To-days and 

should the children gather and where else- 
should there be provision so abundant for their 
every want ! 

In the Father's house all the lost children, 
shall find one another ; all the brothers and sis- 
ters will sit down together in the gladness of re- 
union after separation. Never let anyone for 
an instant imagine that our home is to be a mere 
state of blessedness, a sort of Mrvana, a beatific 
sphere of isolation ; it is to be the rallying place 
of the kindred, the joyous hearth round which 
we shall meet when task and toil are over, and 
unfettered, without handicap or limitation, we 
shall go on, learning, loving, living, forever. 

Here, a thousand obstacles interfere with us- 
and a thousand hindrances interpose to prevent 
our development. We have feet, not wings^ 
Inherited tendencies clog our noblest efforts, 
our aspirations are weighted by the grossness of 
appetite, our good is marred by evil. Sin 
creeps into our most beautiful Edens. Home 
life is shadowed by frowning faces, by uncon- 
genial dispositions, by tempers which flare up 
into sudden flame, or smoke and smolder in 
gloomy wrath. 

One is never sure, when a day begins, what 

174 



Trustful To-moerows 

may lie in its pathway before nightfall. One 
is never able to say precisely how he shall meet 
temptation^ nor to count on his reinforcements. 
Needs must we sometimes strive with ApoUyon 
and find him bearing us down with bitter onset 
and terrific blows. There^ the core of all the 
sweetness will be entire freedom from sin^ entire 
absence of the evil overmastering desire, entire 
conformity to the divine will, and joy in obey- 
ing the divine commands. 

It is certain that in the home awaiting us we 
shall have service of the' highest. In what way 
we shall serve, on what errands be sent, we do 
not know, but we shall know hereafter. With 
the glad alacrity of children we shall carry mes- 
sages and study new lessons and do as the 
Father bids us, once we are safe within the gates 
of the Father's house. 

Sometimes we wonder, foolishly, whether we 

shall know our loved ones when we meet them 

sgain. As if the life likeness would be gone 

simply because the dear ones had been dwelling 

a little longer than ourselves in the Father^s 

presence ! As if love were a thing of the hour ! 

As if death were more than transition, the angel 

of emancipation, the opener of the door into 

175 



Cheerful To-days and 

the lighted room after the long journey ! As if 

it were God's way to give us a half blessing ! 

The joy of the home awaiting us will be the joy 

of meeting once more and keeping through 

eternity the little ones who went on before us, 

the comrades and friends who dropped away 

from our side, the fathers and mothers who 

showed us first the pathway to our God. Faith 

claims this dear privilege of anticipation. 

There, in the Father's house, we shall meet, we 

shall love, we shall serve, we shall know and be 

known. 

"For death is but a covered way 

That opens into light, 
Wherein no blinded child can stray 

Beyond the Father's sight." 

Best of all, in the home awaiting us we shall 

see our Master face to face. How wonderful 

will be that glad recognition. Not as they saw 

him who walked with him in Galilee, when 

he bore the burden of our flesh and was ac- 

quainted with grief ; not as the disciples and the 

women who came to him for healing and help 

saw him, with glory veiled and hidden; but 

rather as those privileged ones beheld him to 

whom he came after his resurrection, entering 

into their company and saying ^Teace V^ when 

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Trustful To-]^orrows 

the doors were shut, and their wistful eyes could 
scarce believe in the divine beauty of that 
strange revelation. We shall see Jesus en- 
throned and glorified. We shall hear his voice. 
There will be no dimming cloud of sin to keep 
US away, but even as he draws us to him we shall 
hasten, happy to be in that close circle of those 
who are evermore his own. 

Says Jeremy Taylor: 

^^If thou wilt be fearless of death endeavor to 
be in love with the felicities of saints and angels 
and be once persuaded to believe that there is a 
condition of living better than this; that there 
are creatures more noble than we; that above 
there is a country better than ours; that the 
inhabitants know more and know better, and are 
in places of rest and desire; and first learn to 
value it, and then learn to purchase it, and 
death cannot be a formidable thing which lets 
us into so much joy and so much felicity. 

^^And indeed who would not think his own 

condition mended if he passed from conversing 

with dull mortals, with ignorant and foolish 

persons, with tyrants, and enemies of learning, 

to converse with Homer and Plato, with 

Socrates and Cicero, with Plutarch and Fabri- 

177 



Cheerful To-days and 

cius ? So the heathens speculated, but we con- 
sider higher. . ^The dead that die in the Lord' 
shall converse with St. Paul, and all the college 
of the Apostles, and all the saints and martyrs^ 
with all the good men whose memory we pre- 
serve in honor, with excellent kings and holy 
bishops, and with the great Shepherd and 
Bishop of our souls, Jesus Christ, and with God 
himself. For ^Christ died for us, that, whether 
we wake or sleep, we might live together with 
him.^ Then we shall be free from lust and 
envy, from fear and rage, from covetousness 
and sorrow, from tears and cowardice: and 
these indeed properly are the only evils that are 
contrary to felicity and wisdom.'' 

I think we limit our conception of heaven too 
strictly to the devotional side of our nature, as 
if we were to spend eternity simply and exclu- 
sively in acts of worship. That praise will be 
the atmosphere of our being, that our souls will 
be bathed in thankfulness, who can doubt? 
But, if we are to go onward in the future as in 
the present life, we shall share social converse 
and peer into the secret things of God. Science, 
in its infancy here, will be studied there in beau- 
tiful unfoldings, with powers freed from the 

178 



Trustful To-morrows 

•cobwebs of earth. We shall go on learning 
^ith open eye and quickened ear. Think of 
learning without fatigue^ of dwelling where all 
around assists the mind^ of going at an instant's 
notice to the farthest star ! There is no reason 
to fear that we shall be hindered in heaven from 
pursuing any employment which may be carried 
on in the pure sight of God. 

We are flitting^ as the call reaches us, from 
ihese houses of clay to our everlasting habi- 
•tations. 

"Not rising up together 

In whirlwind or in cloud, 
In the hush of the summer weather 

Or when storms are gathering loud, 
But one by one we go 
To the sweetness none may know." 

A messenger straight from the City of God 

►crosses our threshold, and one dear to us is not, 

for God has taken him. The messenger comes 

i;o us one by one, and we know not when ; but let 

it be at cockcrow, or at noon, or at midnight, it 

is the summons home, and the Lord himself will 

lead us to the place prepared. An end then of 

^very anxiety, a realization then of all for which 

we have hoped and waited and prayed. We shall 

1)0 with God in heaven forever. 

179 



Cheerful To-days and 

**We are on our journey home 
Where Christ our Lord has gone. 

We shall meet around his throne 
When he makes his people one 

In the new Jerusalem. 

*'0 glory shining far 

From the never setting sun, 
O trembling Morning Star, 

Our journey's almost done 
To the new Jerusalem." 

180 



Trustful To-morrows 



CHAPTEE XXI 
A Study of Axgels 

The Bible is a supernatural book^ and its 
pages are bright with supernatural radiance. 
All through its conrse^, from Genesis to Eevela- 
tion, we hear the rustling of angel wings^ and 
behold the shimmering of angel robes^ and hear 
the sweet cadences of seraph voices. In these 
duller days we are often insensible to the vision 
and the song/ and we do not readily accept the 
sweet comfort the Lord is ever willing to send 
us, but why should we refuse to believe the old 
never repealed word which says that he giveth 
his angels charge concerning us, that in their 
hands they bear us up, and that they so guard 
US that we do not hurt our feet upon the way, 
nor stumble, nor fall ? Are they not all minis- 
tering spirits, still sent forth to minister to 
them who shall be heirs of salvation ? 

The first recorded mention of an angelic er- 
rand to our race was not, however, one of com- 
fort or help, but of restraint, and of the barred 
13 181 



Cheerful To-days and 

door of a lost Eden. ^^And the Lord God said. 
Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know 
good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his 
band, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, 
and live forever: therefore the Lord God sent 
him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the 
ground from whence he was taken. So he drove 
out the man; and he placed at the east of the 
garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the flame of 
a sword which turned every way, to keep the way 
of the tree of life.*^ 

Terrible in their glorj^, these mighty creatures 
of Jehovah, created perhaps for the purpose 
which they then fulfilled, stood still at Eden's 
morning gate, with the glory of the dawn light 
on their faces. And man, fleeing from their 
blinding radiance and dumb before the majesty 
of that circling sword of fire, might still look 
up to heaven, from angel and from brand, and 
discern, faint indeed, and dim in the distance, 
but strange and clear and steadfast, the promise 
of the coming Saviour, whose star should yet 
shine in the East. 

When Moses, listening to the voice of the 

Lord, told the children of Israel to make unto 

the Lord an offering of their best and choicest 

182 



Trustful To-morrows 

possessions and to prepare for him a tabernacle 
and a sanctuary, we again find the cherubim, 
symbolizing now the covenant love of God to 
man. This time the cherubim are to be made of 
fine beaten gold, and the Lord himself gives the 
pattern to Moses. ^'^Of one piece with the mercy- 
seat shall ye make the cherubim on the two ends 
thereof. iVnd the cherubim shall spread out 
their wings on high, covering the mercy-seat 
with their wings, with their faces one to an- 
other; toward the mercy-seat shall the faces of 
the cherubim be.^^ Through the long ages be- 
fore Immanuel came, priest and prophet and 
the devout and expectant among God's people, 
praying for the Messiah, knew that the glory of 
the overshadowing cherubim was as the glory of 
the Xew Jerusalem in the Holy of Holies. There 
it abode until that dark day on Golgotha when 
by wicked hands the Messiah, whom his own did 
not recognize, was crucified and slain, and then, 
when the veil of the temple was rent, and the 
saints lying in their graves arose and appeared 
unto many, for ever and for ever the glory faded 
from the place where the cherubim had kept 
their century upon century^s tryst. 

It was while sitting under the oaks of Mamre, 

183 



Cheerful To-days axd 

in his tent dooi% in the heat of the day, that 
Abraham the aged suddenly had a vision of 
angels. Perhaps he had been musing of the 
wonderful way over which the Lord had led him 
from the days of his youth, when the mystic call 
had drawn him away from his kindred and his 
father's house to seek an unknown land. The 
Lord had promised Abraham many things; as 
yet the fulfillment of a part of the promise was 
delaj^ed. His beautiful wife^ Sarah^ no longer 
hoped to be the mother of his son ; she had fore- 
gone that proud desire^ and, jealous as she was 
of Hagar, the disdainful Egyptian^ she had 
acknowledged Hagar^s child as the heir of her 
husband's line. The transaction with Hagar, 
read by modern Occidental eyes, is incompre- 
hensible, but it was and is in keeping with or- 
dinary Oriental usage, and no doubt even Sarah 
took a certain pleasu.re in the beauty and vigor 
of the Egyptian's boy. 

God had distinctl}^ told Abraham that Sarah 
his wife, a fair woman still, but ninety years 
old, should bear him a son. And Abraham be- 
lieved God. Yet it may well have been that 
under his faith there was the moanincr crv at 

times of impatience vrith the long waiting ; and 

184 



Trustful To-morrows 

again^ that there may have been the human pro- 
test at what seemed an impossibility ; as though 
anything could ever be impossible to God ! As 
Abraham sat there^, quietly thinking, he lifted 
up his eyes, and lo ! three men stood over against 
him. They had not approached. The long 
white stretch of sand had no footprints upon 
it, and no caravan had brought these messen- 
gers, on whose garments there was no dust of 
travel, in whose benignant faces was no shadow 
of fatigue. There were three men, but one was 
evidently the chief and the others his attend- 
ants ; and it may well have been that this kingly 
one was our Lord Christ, appearing thus as 
again and again he appeared to his servants 
before he took upon him our flesh and lived 
among us for three and thirty years. 

"My lord,^^ said the patriarch, bowing low 
with Oriental courtesv, "if now I have found 
favor in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, 
from thy servant : let now a little water be 
fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves 
under the tree: and I will fetch a morsel of 
bread, and comfort ye your heart ; after that ye 
shall pass on : forasmuch as ye are come to your 

servant.'^ Then followed the remarkable inter- 

185 



Cheerful To-days and 

view in which Isaac was again promised, and the 
Btill more amazing conversation in which Abra- 
ham pleaded for Sodom^ over which impended 
the wrath of Jehovah. In all history there is 
nothing more extraordinary than the story of 
Abraham^s long and intimate talk with the Lord, 
its pleading tenderness and compassion on the 
part of the man and its gracious relenting on 
the part of God. Intercessory prayer has here 
its pattern and its encouragement. 

The Lord^ if indeed one angel was the Lord, 
returned to heaven^ and only the two serving 
angels went to Sodom and met Lot sitting in 
the gate of that wicked and doomed city. For 
consolation and for joy the theophany might be 
given^ for warning and for destruction it was 
enough to send forth the angels of war and of 
death. 

Years afterward, when Isaac was a fair boy, 

a lad on whom his father's passionate love was 

set, that father felt that the divine command 

required him to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice. But 

just as the knife was raised to slay the child 

God interfered, and from the rifted skies the 

Angel of the Lord spoke and stayed the father^s 

hand. And to Hagar in the desert, fainting, 

186 



Trustful To-:\roRROws 

wearied, utterly dismayed and heart-stricken, an 
angel came saying, "What aileth thee, Hagar?'^ 
And God opened her tear-blinded eyes, and she 
saw the water of salivation, the well with its 
fragrant waves, and she filled her bottle with 
water, and gave the lad drink. 

More beautiful than almost any other story 
in the Book is that of the sleeping Jacob on his 
way to Padan-aram, home and mother and 
father behind him, with all that home meant 
to the quiet peace-loving nature; an estranged 
twin-brother, deceived and wronged, also behind 
him; but in his heart, with all its sinfulness, a 
true appreciation of and a real longing for the 
Divine. How lovely is the narrative so simply 
and quaintly told in the words of Scripture : 

"And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and 
went toward Haran. And he lighted upon a 
certain place, and tarried there all night, be- 
cause the sun was set ; and he took of the stones 
of that place, and put them for his pillows, and 
lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, 
and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the 
top of it reached to heaven: and behold the 
angels of God ascending and descending on it. 

And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, 

187 



Cheerful To-days and 

I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and 
the God of Isaac : the land whereon thou liest, 
to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; and thy 
seed shall be as the dust of the earth ; and thou 
shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, 
and to the north, and to the south : and in thee 
and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth 
be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and 
will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, 
and will bring thee again into this land; for I 
will not leave thee, until I have done that which 
I ha; 3 spoken to thee of. And Jacob awaked 
out of his sleep, and he said. Surely the Lord is 
in this place; and I knew it not. And he was 
afraid, and said. How dreadful is this place ! 
this is none other but the house of God, and this 
is the gate of heaven. And Jacob rose up early 
in the morning, and took the stone that he had 
put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, 
and poured oil upon the top of it. And he called 
the name of that place Beth-el : but the name of 
that city was called Luz at the first. And Jacob 
vowed a vow, saying. If God will be with me, 
and will keep me in this way that I go, and will 
give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so 

that I come again to mv father's house in peace ; 

188 



Trustful To-morrows 

then shall the Lord be my God : and this stone, 
which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's 
house : and of all that thou shalt give me I will 
surely give the tenth unto thee/' 

Observe how the ladder, invisible to us, 
reaches from earth to heaven. Is it not thus 
Teaching still? And to and fro the angels go, 
upon its shining rounds, doing the will of God. 
"With what grace of thankfulness the young man 
pledges his gift of acknowledgment, that tribute 
of the tenth — which is surely little enough for 
any of us to give to the Lord whose watchful 
care of us, too, never ceases. 

Faber's familiar hymn, sung in our churches 
^nd at family worship, never loses its charm : 

^*Hark1 Hark! my soul, angelic songs are swelling 

O'er earth's green fields and ocean's wave-beat shore : 
How sweet the truth those blessed strains are telling 
Of that new life when sin shall be no more ! 
Angels of Jesus, angels of light, 
Singing to welcome the pilgrims of the night. 

''^Darker than night life's shadows fall around us, 
And like benighted men we miss our mark ; 

Ood hides himself, and grace hath scarcely found us 
Ere death finds out his victims in the dark. 

^'Onward we go, for still we hear them singing, 
*Come, weary souls, for Jesus bids you come V 

And through the dark, its echoes sweetly ringing. 
The music of the gospel leads us home. 

:i80 



Cheerful To-days and 

*'Far, far away, like bells at evening pealing, 
The voice of Jesus sounds o'er land and sea, 

And laden souls by thousands, meekly stealing, 
Kind Shepherd ! turn their weary steps to thee. 

**Rest comes at length, though life be long and dreary ; 

The day must dawn and darksome night be past ; 
All journeys end in welcome to the weary, 

And heaven, the heart's true home, will come at last. 

"Cheer up, my soul I faith's moonbeams softly glisten 
Upon the breast of life's most troubled sea ; 

And it will cheer thy drooping heart to listen 

To those brave songs which angels mean for thee. 

"Angels, sing on ! your faithful watches keeping ; 

Sing us sweet fragments of the songs above ; 
While we toil on, and soothe ourselves with weeping. 
Till life's long night shall break in endless love. 
Angels of Jesus, angels of light. 
Singing to welcome the pilgrims of the night !'^ 

Many long days and nights pass over Jacob's 
head; he toils and waits and loves in the house 
of his stern kinsman Laban^ the Syrian. The 
sweetest idyl of love and patience in the world 
is that old story of JacoVs passion for Eachel. 
^^And Jacob served seven years for Rachel^ and 
they seemed to him but a few days for the love 
he had to her.^^ Yet seven more were appointed 
unto him^ fourteen in all^ before the dearly be- 
loved became his bride. 

We do not know how often the angels 

strengthened Jacob during those years of exile 

190 



Trustful To-morrows 

and persistent labor, but they came, if inference 

may count, many a time and oft ; sometimes in 

companies, sometimes singly. Once, indeed, to 

this child of God there was given an experience 

of depth and agony in prayer such as few of our 

race have ever known. 

"And Jacob was left alone ; and there wrestled 

a man with him until the breaking of the day. 

And when he saw that he prevailed not against 

him, he touched the hollow of his thigh ; and the 

hollow of JacoVs thigh was strained, as he 

wrestled with him. And he said. Let me go, for 

the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let 

thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto 

him. What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. 

And he said, Thv name shall be called no more 

Jacob, but Israel: for thou hast striven with 

God and with men, and hast prevailed. And 

Jacob asked him, and said. Tell me, I pray thee, 

thy name. And he said. Wherefore is it that 

thou dost ask after my name ? And he blessed 

him there. And Jacob called the name of the 

place Peniel : for, said he, I have seen God face 

to face, and my life is preserved. And the sun 

rose upon him as he passed over Penuel, and he 

halted upon his thigh. Therefore the children 

191 



Cheerful To-days and 

of Israel eat not the sinew of the hip which is 
upon the hollow of the thigh^ unto this day: 
because he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh 
in the sinew of the hip/^ 

We remember the circumstances which con- 
fronted Jacob: the menace of his offended 
brother on the advance to meet him with his 
band of followers^ armed to the teeth^ read)^ to 
pounce upon and destroy the caravan and to 
avenge the injury of the long ago^ when Jacob 
by deceit carried off the blessing and the birth- 
right. Says the Eev. Dr. Wm. M. Baker^ writ- 
ing of this night of agonizing prayer : 

^^How very much iRore do we know of this 
Visitor than did Jacob ! Whatever those learned 
who had him as companion during the seven 
theophanies which came after this is ours also. 
All that men came to know of Christ during his^ 
life and deaths ages after^ on earthy is our own. 
Imagine our importunity to have increased up 
to the measure of our information ! Though 
our Esau is Satan^ and with all hell at his heels^ 
what need we fear, having such an interlocked 
grasp upon our Lord ! 

^^We read of how a king or emperor knights 
upon some well-fought field some valiant sol- 

192 



Tkustful To-:^iorrows 

dier, the nobility of whose new title is borne by 
his rejoicing children to the end of time. So 
is it here ; the distinctive name of the people of 
God^ till at last prayer shall perish^ is ^the 
Israel of God/ ^An Israelite indeed/ said Jesus 
of Xathanael^ since beneath the fig-tree he had 
himself been wrestled with by the man in 
prayer : J^athanael, like Jacobs being permitted 
€0 soon afterward to see the face of this divine 
Foe — Jesus, the Christ. 

"x\nd Jacob is blessed of the Son of God. 
But, now as ever, not one syllable does Christ 
say as to how, and when, and where, the sup- 
pliant — in this case Jacob — shall be rescued 
from his Esau. The patriarch knows, as he ad- 
vances next dav alone and at the forefront of 
his household, nothing but that God is with 
him ; and to him he leaves it all. ISTone the less 
he still uses all possible means, bowing himself 
seven times before the savage sheik who, with 
his four hundred spears at his back, bears down 
upon him. Here is no interposition of God! 
Esau rides down upon his traitorous brother 
with leveled spear; his vengeance whetted by 
the sight of his enemy, his lust for plunder by 
the swarming herds and slaves in full view. 



Cheerful To-days and 

There is no faltering in a purpose which during 
near half a hundred years has hardened into 
steel. With eye and weapon unswerving Esau 
rushes down upon Jacob. A moment more and 
the unarmed man will lie weltering in his blood 
— his wives and sons^ his flocks and herds, given 
over to slaughter, outrage, and spoil. 

^^In that instant Esau is struck through the 
heart! But it is by an arrow peculiar to the 
quiver and bow of him of whom it is written: 
^Thine arrows are sharp in the hearts of the 
king's enemies, whereby the people are subdued 
under thee !' For it is an arrow of conquering 
love ! Saul, the persecutor, fell transfixed by it 
when in full career, and so is it now. ^And Esau 
ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on 
his neck and kissed him ; and they wept.' '' 

Friends, there come to us, in our lives, peri- 
ods as pregnant with calamity as this period 
whicli came to Jacob. Again and again we are 
perplexed, harassed, troubled, distressed, but 
ah ! never, never, forsaken if we believe in God, 
if we dare to take him at his word, if we carry 
every trial and trouble and disaster and threat 
of evil straight to his feet. When we are 

tempted he can enable us to conquer, when we 

194 



Trustful To-morrows 

are overcome he can help tis to arise. Again let 
lis quote from Dr. Baker^, whose thought of the 
personal Christ was so vivid and his realization 
of Christ's immanence so precious that, with the 
saints of old, he seems to have had the open 
vision : 

'' ^The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, 
and the violent take it by force.' Jacob saw a 
ladder, reaching from where he lay to heaven, 
up and down which trooped the angels : he is 
afterward to learn that this is as a scaling ladder 
planted upon the soil, its top against the ram- 
parts of heaven, and by which he and we must 
«torm heaven itself or do without. If vou who 
read have never known of the almost infinite 
stringency of the world upon you, and at every 
step; if you have not gone to God and prayed 
and prayed, and prayed only apparently to be 
repulsed — yes, and seemingly cruelly repulsed^ 
and often — you have no business with this page. 
It is to such as have known, long known, the 
agony of prayer long despised, rejected, refused, 
these lines are addressed. For it is not ^the 
kingdom,' it is the King of heaven who ^suffer- 
eth violence,' who must be taken bv force. Our 

want is but the temporary inducement to that 

195 



Cheerful To-days and 

which is the supreme thing : and that is, our so 
wrestling in prevailing prayer with the Son of 
God as to expand and develop our whole 
nature into likeness to his. Thus are we ^made 
partakers of the divine nature ;^ thus are we, in 
the end, ^filled with all the fullness of God/ ^^ 

In the ISTew Testament we find the angels in 
constant ministry upon our Lord. An angel 
announced to the Virgin the honor of her com- 
ing motherhood : ^Tear not, Mary : for thou hast 
found favor with God.^^ A choir of angels sang 
in the hearing of the shepherds on the night of 
ImmanueFs birth: 

^^And there were shepherds in the same coun- 
try abiding in the field, and keeping watch by 
night over their flock. And an angel of the 
Lord stood by them, and the glory of the Lord 
shone round about them: and they were sore 
afraid. And the angel said unto them. Be not 
afraid ; for behold, I bring you good tidings of 
great joy which shall be to all the people: for 
there is born to you this day in the city of David 
a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this 
is the sign unto you; Ye shall find a babe 
wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a 

inanger. And suddenly there was with the angel 

196 




The Annunciation. (After the Painting by D. G. Rossetti.) 



Trustful To-jmokrows 

a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, 
and saying, 

^^Glory to God in the highest, 

^^And on earth peace among men in whom he 
is well pleased. 

^^And it came to pass, when the angels went 
away from them into heaven, the shepherds said 
one to another. Let us now go even unto Beth- 
lehem, and see this thing that is come to pass, 
which the Lord hath made known unto us. And 
they came with haste, and found both Mary and 
Joseph, and the babe lying in the manger. And 
when they saw it, they made known concerning 
the saying which was spoken to them about this 
child. And all that heard it wondered at the 
things which were spoken unto them by the 
shepherds. But Mary kept all these sayings, 
pondering them in her heart. And the shep- 
herds returned, glorifying and praising God for 
all the thino;s that thev had heard and seen, even 
as it was spoken imto them. 

^^And when eight days were fulfilled for cir- 
cumcising him, his name was called Jesus, 
which was so called by the angel before he was 
conceived in the womb.'' 

Our Lord had the angels ever within his call ; 
14 107 



Cheerful To-days and 

they were doubtless awed and amazed when they 
beheld his humiliation, but their business, as 
was his, supremely, was to do God's will fully, 
and without a question. And so when he 
needed them they ministered to him : in the 
lonely nights upon the cold still mountains, in 
the desert spaces, in the garden of his agony. 
Angels said, as they waited to see his disciples 
in the dawn of the resurrection, "He is not here. 
He is risen !'^ and when he ascended, and a cloud 
received him out of the sight of his friends and 
followers, while yet they stood steadfastly gazing 
into heaven as he went, behold two men stood by 
them in white apparel, saying, "This Jesus shall 
so come in like manner as ye beheld him going 
into heaven.^^ 

Very dear to every Christian heart must be 
that story of Peter shut up in prison by Herod 
while prayer was made earnestly by the church 
unto God for him. 

"And when Herod was about to bring him 
forth, the same night Peter was sleeping be- 
tween tw^o soldiers, bound with two chains : and 
guards before the door kept the prison. And 
behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him, and 

a light shincd in the cell : and he smote Peter on 

108 



Trustful To-:.iorkows 

the side> and awoke him, saying, Else up quickly. 
And his chains fell off from his hands. And the 
angel said unto him, Gird thyself, and bind 
on thy sandals/^ 

As if the angel had said gently to the prisoner, 
^'Take thy time; there is no need of haste. 
Herod shall not bring thee forth for death. 
Jehovah Jesus gives thee life to serve him yet 
a while longer here.'^ 

^^And he saith nnto him, Cast thy garment 
about thee, and follow me. And he went out, 
and followed; and he wist not that it was true 
which was done by the angel, but thought he saw 
a vision. And when they were past the first and 
the second ward, they came unto the iron gate 
that leadeth into the city ; which opened to them 
of its own accord : and they went out, and passed 
on through one street ; and straightway the an- 
gel departed from him. And when Peter was 
come to himself, he said, ?f ow I know of a truth, 
that the Lord hath sent forth his angel and de- 
livered me out of the hand of Herod, and from 
all the expectation of the people of the Jews. 
And when he had considered the thing, he came 
to the house of Mary the mother of John whose 

surname was Mark ; where manv were gathered 

199 



Cheerful To-days and 

together and were praying. And when he 
knocked at the door of the gate, a maid came to 
answer, named Ehoda. And when she knew 
Peter's voice, she opened not the gate for joy, 
but ran in, and told that Peter stood before the 
gate. And they said unto her, Thon art mad. 
But she confidently affirmed that it was even so. 
And they said. It is his angel. But Peter con- 
tinued knocking: and when they had opened, 
the)^ saw him, and were amazed. But he, beck- 
oning unto them with the hand to hold their 
peace, declared unto them how the Lord had 
brought him forth out of the prison. And he 
said. Tell these things unto James, and to the 
brethren. And he departed, and went to another 
place.'^ 

Not to you and me in these later times is it 
appointed often that the angels shall bring their 
hands of potency and break open our prison 
doors in our sight; yet I am not doubtful that 
they do come, and that when our doors of trouble 
open of their own accord it is because God's 
angels have been here to oil their hinges and 
noiselessly turn their locks. To many a dear one 
in the last hour of earthly life our Lord sends 

his angels, and they come in compassion and 

200 



Trustful To-morrows 

give the needed aid. And to an angel wliatever 
God bids is important; his errand to a hovel is 
as welcome as his message to a palace. The 
Eastern legend of the angel sent from God to 
give counsel to King Solomon and also to help 
on her way back to her people a little yellow ant, 
burdened with a heavy load, has its lesson for us. 

But once we are freed from the body and its 
limitations, once we are safe at home, not an 
angel, however strong and beautiful — not Ga- 
briel, nor Ithuriel, nor Michael — shall lead us 
into the great peace; but the Lamb that was 
slain, our blessed Redeemer, shall himself con- 
duct us to the green pastures and the still waters. 

To Moses, to Gideon, to Elijah, to Daniel, to 
Peter, to John, even to the incarnate Jesus him- 
self, the angels came at need. To the saints, 
ransomed by the precious blood and brought 
home to go no more out, the Lord of the angels 
shall give the sweet welcome, where 

*'Ten thousand times ten thousand, 

In sparkling raiment bright, 
The armies of the ransomed saints 

Throng up the steeps of light. 
'Tis finished, all is finished, 

Their fight with death and sin. 
Fling open wide the golden gates, 

And let the victors in I" 
201 



Cheerful Todays and 



CHAPTER XXII 

Talking With Our Heavenly Father 

Prayer is too often narrowed into a mere 
begging of favors from God. We are in want of 
many things; of healthy of a business opening, 
of ease of mind^ of judgment so that we may 
make right decisions. We are solicitous for our 
loved ones; we do not know what is best for 
them and we are afraid of making mistakes, or 
they are ill and we long for their recovery. In 
our consciousness of need we turn to God, peti- 
tioning his help. Mrs. Browning puts the mat- 
ter in a couplet, 

"Lips say, God be pitiful, 

That ne'er say, God be praised !" 

In the day of our fullness and satisfaction we 

do not seek the Lord as in the day of famine and 

emptiness if our conception of prayer is merely 

that prayer is a means of getting what we wish 

for. 

Prayer ought to be more than this to every 

one of us. The prayer which is real is com- 

202 



Trustful To-morrows 

munion with God. It is not only a plea for 
grace; it is an acknowledgment of grace. It 
loses itself in the dear sense of the endless love 
of God as a drop is lost in the brimming cnp ; as 
a wave is lost in the sea. Prayer is adoration. 
It is man lifting his soul to God in rejoicings and 
owning that every good gift and every perfect 
gift comes down from above. They who live 
near God in daily life must be often with him 
in prayer^ and from the hour of silence in his 
presence they will never fail to derive refresh- 
ment. 

Prayer may properly carry every temporal 
anxiety to the throne of grace and leave it there ; 
for if God so clothe the lilies of the fields as he 
does in their beautiful raiment^ shall he not 
much more clothe ns ? But its larger scope^ its 
more insistent meanings should lead it to con- 
vey the desires of the spirit and the soul to him 
who can make our higher nature regnant 
over whatever is lower. The disciple will emu- 
late his Master in intercession for those who 
know not the Lord. Sometimes we exhaust our- 
selves in endeavors for our children^ our friends, 
for those who have not found Christ precious, 

but we forget that we may do more for them by 

203 



Cheerful To-days axd 

talking about them to our Heavenly Father than 
by talking to them in our own partial and im- 
perfect way. 

If we have the right feeling about our rela- 
tion to this dear Saviour^ whose we are, and 
whom we serve, and are living in an atmosphere 
of prayer, w^e shall shrink from no place to 
v/hich he sends us. He may direct us to the 
dark cellar and the attic room, to the obscure 
and the lowly, to the prisoner in his cell, to the 
untaught and the illiterate. Or he may say to 
the young Christian girl that he wants her to 
work for him in society, to shine for him in the 
drawing-room, to move for him sweet as a 
flower, harmonious as music, in gay throngs 
where there are few who love him but many who 
need him. ^^I am thine, dear Lord,^^ the child's 
answer will ring back, in response to the com- 
mand, and in the white satin and fine linen and 
purple of social splendor or in the rough home- 
spun of poverty the child will discover the 
sphere of duty. Each of us in this world fol- 
lowing Christ is like the ship which puts out to 
sea under sealed orders, our duty being just to 
go where we are sent. 

Perhaps you have read the life of Saint 

204 



Trustful To-morrovn's 

Theresa, whose name is in the Eoman calendar, 
and who was a Spanish lady abbess of the Six- 
teenth Century. She was a woman of deep piety 
and unreserved consecration, and her biographer 
tells us that she entered wonderfully into the 
reality of the Christian life. ^^Our Lord was as 
present, as near and as affable to this extraor- 
dinary saint as ever he was to Martha or Mary 
Magdalene or the mother of Zebedee's children. 
She prepared him where to lay his head. She 
sat at his feet and heard his word. She chose 
the better part, and he acknowledged to herself 
and to others that she had done so. She washed 
his feet with her tears and wiped them with the 
hair of her head. She had been forgiven much 
and she loved much. He said to her, ^Mary,^ 
and she answered him, ^Eabboni !' And he gave 
her messages to his disciples who had not waited 
for him as she had waited, till she was able to 
say to them all that she had seen the Lord, and 
that he had spoken such and such things within 
her." One of Theresa^s talks about prayer ap- 
peals to many readers because of its practical 
application to everyday trials and vicissitudes: 
^^The true proficiency of the soul consists not 

so much in deep thinking or eloquent speaking or 

2v0.5 



Cheerful To-days and 

beautiful writing as in much and warm loving. 
Now if you ask me in what way this much and 
warm love may be acquired^ I answer, By resolv- 
ing to do the will of God and by watching to do 
his will as often as occasion offers. Those who 
truly love God love all good wherever they find 
it. They seek all good to all men. They en- 
courage all good in all men. They commend all 
good, they always unite themselves with all 
good, they always acknowledge and defend all 
good. They have no quarrels. They bear no 
envy. Lord, give me more and more of this 
blessed love. Grant me grace not to quit this 
underworld life till I no longer desire anything, 
nor am capable of loving anything, save thee 
alone. Grant that I may use this word "^love' 
with regard to thee alone, since there is no solid- 
ity for my love to rest on save in thee. The soul 
has her own ways of understanding, and of 
finding in herself by certain signs and great 
conjectures, whether she really loves his Divine 
Majesty or no. Her love is full of high im- 
pulses, and longings to see and to be with and 
to be like God. All else tires and wearies out 
the soul. The best of created things disappoint 

and torment the soul. God alone satisfies the 

206 



Trustful To-morrows 

soul, till it is impossible to dissemble or mistake 
such a love. When once I came to see the great 
beauty of our Lord it turned all other comeliness 
to corruption to me. My heart could rest on 
nothing and on no one but himself. \Yhen any- 
thing else would enter my heart I had only to 
turn mv eves for a moment in upon that su- 
preme beaut}' that was engraven within me. So 
that it is now impossible for any created thing 
to so possess my soul as not to be instantly ex- 
pelled, and my mind and heart set free by a 
little effort to recover the remembrance of the 
goodness and beauty of our Lord.*^ 

This conscious dwelling with Christ should 
make the disciple a blithe companion on the 
road. Andrew Bonar of Scotland, a man much 
in prayer, used to say, "We should always be 
wearing the garment of praise, not just waving 
a palm-branch now and then.^^ "Thanksgiv- 
ing,^^ said the same dear saint, "is the very air 
of heaven. The oil of joy calms down the waves 
of trouble.^^ Keble knew the secret of this rare 
state of mind when he wrote : 

"Who but a Christian through all life 

That blessing may prolong, 
Who, through the world's sad day of strife, 

Still chants his morning song. 
207 



Cheerful To-days axd 

"Ever the richest, tenderest glow 

Sets round the autumnal sun. 
But there sight fails ; no heart may know 

The bliss when life is done." 

Dr. A. J. Gordon so lived a life hidden with 
Christ in God that his very countenance shone, 
and all sorts of men — tramps^ drunkards^ des- 
perate persons — turned to him with confidence 
knowing that he would listen to their cry for 
help^ and help them if he could. He knew that 
^^a little talk with Jesns^^ better than anything 
else ^'^smooths the rugged way.^^ 

Elizabeth Prentiss^ wife^ mother^ author^ 
friend^ and as sanctified and set apart as Saint 
Theresa herself — for let no one think that God 
especially honors those who from a mistaken de- 
sire to please him retreat from the world — dur- 
ing her long and most useful life spent much 
time in her closet. Prayer was to her the Chris- 
tian's vital breathy and her letters^ her conver- 
sations with friends^ her whole tenor of living, 
showed that she was often alone with God. She 
wrote in her diary^ at a time when her health 
was much impaired : 

^^Another peaceful^ pleasant Sunday, whose 

only drawback has been the want of strength to 

208 



Trustful To-morrows 

get down on my knees and praise and pray to 
my Saviour^ as I long to do. For well as I am, 
and astonishingly improved in every way, a 
very few minutes' use of my voice, even in a 
whisper, in prayer, exhausts me to such a de- 
gree that I am ready to faint. This seems so 
strange when I can go on talking to any extent 
— but then it is talking without emotion and in 
a desultory way. Ah, well ! God knows best in 
what manner to let me live ; and I desire to ask 
for nothing but a docile, acquiescent temper, 
whose only petition shall be, ^AVhat wilt thou 
have me to do?' not how can I get most enjoy- 
ment along the vv^ay. I ,can not believe, if I am 
his child, that he will let anything hinder my 
progress in the divine life. It seems dreadful 
that I have gone on so slowly, and backward so 
many times — but then I have been thinking 
this is ^to humble and to prove me, and to do me 
good in the latter end.' ... I thank my 
God and Saviour for every faint desire he gives 
me to see him as he is, and to be changed into 
his image, and for every struggle against sin 
he enables me to make. It is all of him. I do 
wish I loved him better! I do wish he were 

never out of my thoughts, and that the aim to 

209 



Cheerful To-days and 

do his will swallowed up all other desires and 
strivings. Satan whispers that will never be. 
But it shall be I One dav — oh, lonired-for, 
blessed, blissful day I — Christ will beeome my 
All in all I Yes, even mine !'^ 

x\gain^ slie was writing to a young friend in 
mneh trouble of mind concerning: his salvation : 

^"1 dare not answer your letter, just received, 
in my own strength, but must pray over it long. 
It is a iirreat thino- to learn how far our doubts 
and despondencies are the direct result of physi- 
cal causes, and another great thing is, when we 
can not trace any such connection, to bear pa- 
tiently and quietly what God perm its, if he does 
not authorize. I have no more doubt that you 
love him, and that he loves you, than that I love 
him and that he loves me. You have been daily 
in my prayers. Temptations and conflict are 
inseparable from the Christian life ; no strange 
thing has happened to you. Let me comfort you 
with the assurance that vou will be taudit more 
and more by God's Spirit how to resist ; and that 
true strength and holy manhood will spring up 
from this painful soil. Try to take heart ; there 
is more than one foot-print on the sands of time 

to prove that ^some forlorn and shipwrecked 

210 



Trustful To-jSiorrows 

brother^ has traversed them before you, and 
come off conqueror through the Beloved. Don't 
stop praying, for your life! Be as cold and 
emotionless as you please ; God will accept your 
naked faith, when it has no glow or warmth in 
it ; and in his own time the loving, glad heart 
will come back to you. You can't complain of 
any folly to which I could not plead guilty. I 
have put my Saviour's patience to every possible 
test ; and how I love him when I think what he 
will put up with ! 

"You ask if I ^ever feel that religion is a 
sham.' No; never. I Icnow it is a reality. If 
you ask if I am ever staggered by the incon- 
sistencies of professing Christians, I say yes; I 
am often made heartsick by them; but heart- 
sickness always makes me run to Christ, and one 
good look at him pacifies me. This is in fact my 
panacea for every ill ; and as to my own sinful- 
ness, that would certainly overwhelm me if I 
spent much time in looking at it. But it is a 
monster whose face I do not love to see ; I turn 
from its hideousness to the beautv of his face 
who sins not, and the sight of ^yon lovely Man' 
ravishes me. But at your age I did this only by 

fits and starts, and suffered as vou do. So I 

211 



Cheerful To-days axd 

know how to feel for you^ and what to ask for 
you. God purposely sickens us of man and of 
self that we may learn to %ok long at Jesus/ ^^ 

One test of our discipleship is found, I think, 
just where Mrs. Prentiss stood when she took 
time in her busy life to pray for, and to write to, 
a friend about the interests of the soul. Let us 
interrogate ourselves concerning our talks with 
our Father in heaven. Are they altogether self- 
ish, or are we concerned for those who are with- 
out the pale ; for those whom we love but who do 
not love Christ ? 

Do we ever escape from the group of our own 
intimate acquaintances and feel a yearning for 
those whom we do not know, but for whom 
Christ died? 

"There were ninety and nine that safely lay 
In the shelter of the fold." 

They were protected from the storm, but the 
Shepherd cared for the one that was out in the 
wilderness, and his voice said, 

"I go to the desert to find my sheep." 

The true heroes of Christendom to-day are 

those men and women who, caring not for ease 

and scorning luxury, are willing to endure hard- 

212 



Tkustpul To-morhows 

ghip^ privation and loneliness^ living in remote 

fastnesses of the mountains^ in Chinese villages, 

in Hindu cities, in fishers' huts by the Arabian 

Sea, that they may tell the lost of the Saviour. 

They could never bear their lives if they were 

not often in prayer^ if talking with the Heavenly 

Pather were not their meat and drink. 
15 213 



Cheerful To-days and 



CHAPTEE XXIII 
Devout Women of an Elder Day 

Star-like in its radiance, the story of Euth, 
the fair maiden of Moab who, when her young 
husband died, clung so loyally to her sorrowful 
mother-in-law, still beams from the sacred page. 
Euth in those old days was as unique as any 
Enid, Elaine, or Priscilla of a later time. 

A certain man of Beth-lehem-judah, by name 
Elimelech, finding it impossible to care for his 
family during one of the famines which visited 
the land, emigrated with them to the country 
of Moab. We are not to imagine that Elimelech 
meant to remain in Moab beyond the immediate 
exigence of the situation. He went to sojourn 
there, to stay where there was pasture for his 
flocks and food for his household and where his 
sons could grow up in comfort, until again the 
rains should fall and the harvests spring, and 
his native Beth-lehem be again a house of bread. 
Sojourn carries in its very meaning and sound 
a significance which we know when we talk of 
doing things by the da)^ 



o 



14 



Trustful To-:morrows 

But the little family group was never again to 
dwell in one home in the dear land where Elim- 
elech had wooed Xaomi, in the pleasant land 
where the true God was worshiped and in all the 
sanctuary rites there was a foreshadowino^ of the 
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. 
They continued a long while in Moab, and made 
friends there^ and there Elimelech died, and 
Xaomi was left a widow, with two sons who, 
after the Oriental fashion, married and brought 
home their wives, to be to her as daughters. One 
was Orpah, one was Euth ; and for ten years they 
dwelt together, when Mahlon and Chilion both 
died. Then indeed was ISTaomi left desolate, for 
in the alien country her roots had not struck 
deeply, and she turned in her homesick misery 
to go back to her own people and her father^s 
house. 

Nothing can exceed the pathos of the story. 
!N"aomi embraced her daughters-in-law, and bade 
them leave her. 

^^Wherefore she went forth out of the place 

where she was, and her two daughters-in-law 

with her; and they went on the way to return 

unto the land of Judah. And ?f aomi said unto 

her two daughters-in-law. Go, return each to her 

215 



Cheerful To-days and 

mother's house : the Lord deal kindly TV'ith you, 
as ye have dealt with the dead, and with me/' 

But they refused to go, Orpah partially, Ruth 
absolutely; Orpah went back, gently reluctant, 
but after all relieved and light of heart, to her 
own f amilj^, her mother, and her gods, to find a 
husband in Moab, and to be heard of no more 
forever. 

Xot so Ruth. She clung to the weeping 
iN'aomi, offering lier young strength to aid that 
weakness of oncoming age. In words which, 
though familiar through much repetition, still 
drip with sweetness and vibrate with melody 
she said : ^^Entreat me not to leave thee, or to 
return from following after thee: for whither 
thou goest, I will go ; and where thou lodgest, I 
will lodge : thy people shall be my people, and 
thy God my God : where thou diest, will I die, 
and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to 
me, and more also, if aught but death part thee 
and me." 

Thenceforward the two women walked on to- 
gether, and came, mother and daughter bound 
by a new and tender tie, to Beth-lehem. The 
landscape beckoned ]^aomi ; to Ruth it was the 

land of exile, bravely chosen and not unwelcome. 

216 



Tbustpul To-2,ioiiEOws 

She was going with Xaomi to N'aomi's old 
friends and acquaintances, but also to care and 
toil and poverty; for Xaomi went out full and 
was returning empty. 

It was the beginning of the barley harvest, 
and in those daj^s the rich, according to the 
thoughtful consideration of the Mosaic economy, 
made a certain provision for the poor by leaving 
ears for them to glean in the track of the reapers. 
Boaz was a noble and generous citizen of Beth- 
lehem, and though not next of kin was of the 
family of Elimelech. ^NTaomi sent Eu.th to glean 
in the rich man's fields; he saw and was at- 
tracted by the lovely girl ; in due season he mar- 
ried her and thus redeemed the debt which their 
kindred owed to those who were gone. Euth, 
thus entering in the Messianic line, became the 
grandmother of David and an ancestress of Him 
who was the lily of the valley and the rose of 
Sharon, the bright and morning star of the 
world's darkness, the hope of Israel, the Friend 
and Master of the great company of the ran- 
somed. Thus met Gentile with Jew in the lin- 
eage of the Christ. 

Loyalty, obedience, cheerfulness and faith 

seem the distinguishing characteristics of the 

217 



Cheerful To-days and 

beautiful Kuth. A country girl, reared among 
the mountains and the fields, she brought to the 
statelier and more luxurious life which was hers 
as the wife of Boaz the traditions and the 
strength of the hills. Reared in idolatry, she 
came out of its fetters into the freedom of the 
one true worship, into the company of those who 
adored Jehovah. She forsook her own people 
and her father's house, and to her was fulfilled 
in abundant measure the word spoken by the 
Lord : ^^Instead of thy fathers shall be thy chil- 
dren, whom thou shalt make princes in all the 
earth; I will make thy name to be remembered 
in all generations; therefore shall the peoples 
give thee thanks forever and ever/' 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, describing a 
beautiful and unselfish woman, said of her, 
words which might have been applied with equal 
fitness to Ruth of Moab : 

**Her air had a meaning, her movements a grace ; 
You turned from the fairest to gaze on her face ; 
And when you had once seen her forehead and mouth 
You saw as distinctly her soul and her truth. 

**I doubt if she said to you much that could act 
As a thought or suggestion ; she did not attract 
In the sense of the brilliant or wise ; I infer 
*Twas her thinking of others made you think of her," 

218 



Trustful To-:morrows 

Longfellow, in a very familiar lyric, alluded to 
our heroine thus; it is a lover addressing his 
beloved : 

"Long was the good man's sermon 

But it seemed not so to me, 
For he spake of Ruth the beautiful, 

And then I thought of thee." 

As long as time endures, poet and painter will 

tnrn wistfully toward the vision of the fair 

woman gleaning ^^amid the alien corn/' and all 

generations shall call her blessed. 

Many years later the gifted grandson of Euth 

already predestined to be king of Israel, with the 

chrism of Samuel's flask upon his head but in 

peril of life through the enmity of Saul, was 

wandering, an outlaw, in the wilderness of 

Paran. A band of other outlaws, brave, daring, 

and adventurous, the Eobin Hoods of the period, 

surrounded their splendid young captain and 

did his bidding. In Carmel, near the forests 

where David and his men found shelter, there 

was a rich and very great man who had flocks 

and herds. There are men to-day who count 

their wealth by many figures, and who are as 

sordid of heart and as truly paupers in spirit as 

was Nabal the churl. He had three thousand 

219 



Cheerful To-days and 

sheep and a thousand goats and the annual sheep 
shearing had come, and a very natural request 
was sent to the owner of these vast flocks by the 
soldier, who for many months had not only re- 
frained from molesting the shepherds of Nabal 
but had with a strong hand kept other maraud- 
ers away. The Bible narrative is Homeric in its 
simplicity : 

^^And David heard in the wilderness that 
Nabal did shear his sheep. And David sent out 
ten A^oung men, and David said unto the young 
men, Get you up to Carmel, and go to l^abal, and 
greet him in my name : and thus shall ye say to 
him that liveth in prosperity^ Peace be both 
to thee, and peace be to thine house, and peace 
be unto all that thou hast. And now I have 
heard that thou hast shearers : now thy shep- 
herds which were with us, we hurt them not, 
neither was there aught missing unto them, all 
the while they were in Carmel. Ask thy young 
men, and they will shew thee. Wherefore let the 
young men find favour in thine eyes; for we 
come in a good day: give, I pray thee, whatso- 
ever cometh to thine hand unto thv servants, and 
to thy son David. And when David^s young 
men came, they spake to N^abal according to aU 

220 



Trustful To-morrows 

those words in the name of David^ and ceased. 
And Nabal answered David's servants, and said. 
Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse? 
there be manv servants nowadavs that break 
awav everv man from his master. Shall I then 
take my bread, and my water, and my flesh that 
I have killed for my shearers, and give it nnto 
men, whom I know not whence they be? So 
David's yonng men turned their way, and went 
again, and came and told him all those sayings. 
And David said nnto his men. Gird ye on every 
man his sword. And they girded on every man 
his sword ; and David also girded on his sword : 
and there went np after David about four hun- 
dred men ; and two hundred abode by the stuff. 
But one of the young men told Abigail, Xabal's 
wife, saying. Behold, David sent messengers out 
of the wilderness to salute our master; and he 
railed on them. But the men were very good 
unto us, and we were not hurt, neither missed 
we any thing, as long as we were conversant with 
them, when we were in the fields. Thev were a 
wall unto us both by night and day, all the while 
we were with them keeping the sheep. !N"ow 
therefore know and consider what thou wilt do, 

for evil is determined against our master and 

221 



Cheerful To-days and 

against all his house, for he is such a son of 
Belial that one cannot speak to him/^ 

Abigail, NabaFs wife, was a comely matron of 
rare understanding, the type of the prudent 
housewife, a great lady, with a heart and brain 
which rose to meet the occasion. David was 
riding rapidly towards her home, with four 
hundred fierce and angry armed men; such an 
armament as might well cause terror to spring 
in the breasts of those against whom its attack 
was presently to be made. They were famished 
men too, gaunt with hunger, and sterner for 
privation and disappointment; reckless, and 
justly resentful at ingratitude and insult. Ac- 
cording to the canons of their day, they were 
fully within their right in visiting a swift and 
utter wreck on Nabal and his house. Indeed, in 
the war canons of any day, hatred, malice, wrath 
and crueltv stalk imrebuked, and David's in- 
tended onslaught on ISTabal is not without its 
parallels in our nineteenth century. 

Abigail, wise woman that she was, lost no 
time. The men must be conciliated. They were 
starving and must be appeased by food. Hastily 
she gathered such provision as in a well ap- 
pointed household was at her hand. 

222 



Trustful To-morrows 

'^Then Abigail made haste and took two 
hundred loaves, and two bottles of wine, and 
five sheep ready dressed, and five measures 
of parched corn, and an hundred clusters 
of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, 
and laid them on asses. And she said unto 
her young men, Go on before me; behold, 
I come after you. But she told not her 
husband IsTabal. And it was so, as she rode on 
her ass, and came down by the covert of the 
mountain, that, behold, David and his men came 
down against her; and she met them. Now 
David had said, Surely in vain have I kept all 
that this fellow hath in the wilderness, so that 
nothing was missed of all that pertained unto 
him: and he hath returned me evil for good. 
God do so unto the enemies of David, and more 
also, if I leave of all that pertain to him by the 
morning light so much as one man child. And 
when Abigail saw David, she hasted, and lighted 
off her ass, and fell before David on her face, 
and bowed herself to the ground. And she fell 
at his feet, and said. Upon me, my lord, upon me 
be the iniquity : and let thine handmaid, I pray 
thee, speak in thine ears, and hear thou the 
words of thine handmaid. Let not my Lord, I 



22 



o 



Cheereul To-days and 

pray thee, regard this man of Belial, even 
Nabal : for as his name is, so is he ; ISTabal is his 
name, and folly is with him : but I thine hand- 
maid saw not the young men of my lord, whom 
thou didst send. ISTow therefore, my lord, as the 
Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, seeing the 
Lord hath withholden thee from bloodguiltiness, 
and from avenging thyself with thine own hand, 
now therefore let thine enemies, and them that 
seek evil to my lord, be as Nabal. And now this 
present which thy servant hath brought unto 
my lord, let it be given unto the young men that 
follow my lord. Forgive, I pray thee, the tres- 
pass of thine handmaid : for the Lord will cer- 
tainly make my lord a sure house, because my 
lord fighteth the battles of the Lord; and evil 
shall not be found in thee all thy days. And 
though man be risen up to pursue thee, and to 
seek thy soul, yet the soul of my lord shall be 
bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy 
God ; and the souls of thine enemies, them shall 
he sling out, as from the hollow of a sling. And 
it shall come to pass, when the Lord shall have 
done to my lord according to all the good that 
he hath spoken concerning thee, and shall have 

appointed thee prince over Israel ; that this shall 

224 



Trustful To-morrows 

be no grief unto thee^ nor offence of heart nnto 
my lord, either that thou hast shed blood cause- 
less, or that my lord hath avenged himself : and 
when the Lord shall have dealt well with my 
lord, then remember thine handmaid. And 
David said to Abigail, Blessed be the Lord, the 
God of Israel, which sent thee this day to meet 
me : and blessed be thy wisdom, and blessed be 
thou, which hast kept me this day from blood- 
guiltiness, and from avenging myself with mine 
own hand. For in very deed, as the Lord, the 
God of Israel, liveth, which hath withholden me 
from hurting thee, except thou hadst hasted and 
come to meet me, surely there had not been left 
unto Ifabal by the morning light so much as one 
man child. So David received of her hand that 
which she had brought him: and he said unto 
her^ Go up in peace to thine house ; see, I have 
hearkened to thy voice, and have accepted thy 
person.^^ 

We may note the exceeding tact of Abigail in 
her approach to David, in her choice of a gift to 
be sent on before her, and in her appeal to his 
higher nature. When the days of his obscurity 
and peril should have passed, and the Lord 

should have brought him unto honor and do- 

22.5 



Cheerful To-days and 

minion^ she told him it would be a grief of heart 
to remember having needlessly shed innocent 
blood. Her wit, discretion and good sense pre- 
vailed, and David withheld his men from vio- 
lence and left Nabal's estate in peace. Nabal 
indeed died soon after, but it was at the hand of 
the Lord and not by the weapons of David. 

Abigairs portrait might well have been in 
Solomon^s mind when he drew the model woman 
in matchless lines : 

^^Who can find a virtuous woman? for her 
price is far above rubies. The heart of her hus- 
band doth safely trust in her, so that he shall 
have no need of spoil. She will do him good 
and not evil all the days of her life. . . . 
She looketh well to the wavs of her household 
and eateth not the bread of idleness. ^^ 

We do not know the name of the Queen of 
Sheba, but she had courage, and curiosity, and 
a desire to learn more than she could in her own 
land, and so, when rumors were brought to her 
of a young monarch who was wise and master- 
ful, and possessed of the favor of the Most High, 
she came with a very great train — camels that 
bare spices and gold in abundance and precious 
stones. One can see the grand lady in her litter, 

226 



Tkustful To-morrows 

her guards around her^ lier soldiers riding in 
front and rear^ and far behind her ; the ships of 
the desert slowly passing with their freight of 
the precious and the rare. We have only a 
glimpse of her as she is entertained by King 
Solomon, and we can picture her surprise and 
pleasure as she finds that the half has not been 
told her of the state and splendor which sur- 
rounded him. No doubt she carried back new 
ideas to her people and her friends, and a glim- 
mering of the light which was yet to lighten the 
world. 

Esther, the Jewish girl who was elevated to 
the throne of Persia, divides with Euth the in- 
terest of Bible readers, since she too was young 
and fair, and since in immortal youth and 
beauty she moves through the course of history. 
Ahasuerus has little to commend him to our 
admiration. This proud, petulant, arrogant 
and despotic sovereign first deeply insulted his 
wife, Queen Vashti, and then childishly deposed 
her from her position. A succession of young 
women were inspected, as slaves in the market 
might be, before one was found who in all re- 
spects pleased the royal tyrant. One pities 

Esther even when she obtained grace and favor 

227 



Cheerful To-days axd 

in the sight of the king, and when he loved her 
above all the women. JSTo love, as we know that 
pure and hallowed passion, could exist in the 
breast of a polygamous Eastern king. Esther 
simply entered the harem as chief favorite, with 
the distinction of being the king's wife and per- 
haps the mother of his heir. It may be that 
Vashti was childless, in which case she would 
have lost one of her strongest holds on the hus- 
band who paid her so little respect. 

We know the story — how Haman plotted to 
destroy the Jews by wholesale, then as now the 
Hebrews, by reason of sagacity, thrift and su- 
preme cleverness, being objects of envy to other 
and less gifted nations ; and how Mordecai dis- 
covered and defeated the wicked conspiracy, 
aided by Esther, who alone could help her peo- 
ple in the crisis. Her ^^If I perish, I perish,'^ as 
she waits for the king to extend the golden scep- 
ter, still touches our hearts. 

Not so, dear friends, need we approach the 
presence chamber of our gracious Lord and 
King. He is ever extending the scepter of his 
merciful favor, and when we will we may go to 
him, sure of an audience, and sure of a reception 

full of kindness and compassion. 

228 



Trustful To-morrows 

Xo one who has with care perused the Old 

Testament narratives has failed to observe the 

recognition given to motherhood. The mothers 

made the men, then as now-, and if a king were 

good or were bad, were reverent or profane, one 

had not to look very far to see what sort of 

mother brought him up. 
16 229 



\ 



Cheerful To-days and 



CHAPTER XXIV 

Daily Problems 
In the Morning 

Here's a new day ; blessed Jesus, 
Wilt thou take it for thine own? 

In its hours may I serve thee, 
Looking ever to the throne. 

Keep me in the strong temptation 

That I may not fall away, 
Be thy love my full salvation 

From Satanic wiles to-day. 

Hold me safe in sudden trial, 
Let me know thy presence near; 

Give me grkce for self-denial. 
Present blessing, Saviour dear. 

If this day an earthly friendship 
Fail me like the smoking flax, 

Let my hold on thee be firmer, 
Nor my grasp of heaven relax. 

Wholly thine, my blessed Master, 
Wholly thine, in work or rest, 

This day, all days, till the last one 
When I lean me on thy breast. 

I was present the other da}^ when several 

young people were discussing the character of 

a relative slightlv known to me^ and just then 

230 



Trustful To-:morrows 

an object of sympathy because she had lost her 
home. 

^^I don't know what will become of her/' said 
Katharine. ^Tonsin Dorinda is a good woman, 
nobody can doubt her piety^ but she is very hard 
to live with. Somehow, she never fits in any- 
where. Where another person would conciliate 
she antagonizes, and a spirit of contention fol- 
lows wherever she goes.'' 

Her own sister said : ^^If Dorinda is to come 
here I might as well break up housekeeping at 
once. She would ruin the peace of our home.'^ 

Louise took up the conversation. ^^Yes/' she 
said, thoughtfully, ^T know. Cousin Dorinda is 
very sensitive. If she cannot have her own way 
she either goes about looking black and sullen 
like a thunder cloud, making everybody wretch- 
ed, or else she melts into tears, and cries and 
puts the family in the wrong. Nobody has ever 
had patience with her except grandmother, and 
now that she is gone nobody on this earth wants 
Dorinda. She is simply an impossible person in 
a household. She is, as Katharine says, Tiard 
to live with.' " 

My thoughts went very sorrowfully toward 

this absent Dorinda, whose disposition was so 

231 



Cheerful To-days and 

unfortunate. Our mothers do bear with us when 
the rest of the world refuses its tolerance^, and 
hers had apparently borne with her. But the 
patient mother heart was no longer here^ and 
friends and kith and kin were all afraid of the 
constant companionship of Dorinda. She was 
not rich enough to live by herself in independ- 
ence, nor strong enough to go out in the business 
world and find employment by w^hich she could 
earn her bread. A good housekeeper, a lady by 
birth and training, a member of the church, and, 
I am sure, a sincere disciple of Christ, Dorinda, 
at forty-five, was desired nowhere, because of her 
^^contrarj^ w^ays.^^ In those two words a nephew 
summed up his opinion of the aunt whom he 
emphatically hoped would not take up her abode 
under his roof. She w^as a woman of contrary 
ways. 

Thinking it over, it came to me that Dorinda 
had been making herself an unpopular and un- 
desired member of society by slow degrees, and 
during a term of years. As a child and a young 
girl she had been a little willful, perhaps, and 
perhaps a trifle too pronounced in her manner of 
stating a position and holding up her end of an 
argument. Gradually, a little at a time, her 

^232 



Trustful To-^iorrows 

peculiarities had become intensified. She had 
allowed her temper to triumph over politeness 
and kindness. She had lost self-control. She 
had grown difficult; a person to be studied; a 
j)erson of moods and caprices, a person unloving, 
I am afraid, and whom people did not love. 

If I were writing about the duties of others to 
Dorinda I would drop a hint that it would be 
well to exercise gentleness to a woman in her 
case, to be specially tender and considerate, as 
one would be to an invalid or a crippled person, 
since here was a calamity, not to the body, but 
to the heart and mind. I did not feel that 
Louise and Katharine and the j^oung nephew 
were wholly in the right, as I observed how lack- 
ing in charity they were to their kinswoman. 
But I am not writing for them to-day, and so I 
will just quote a favorite Scripture text and pass 
on to my subject: ^'^We that are strong ought 
to bear the infirmities of the weak.^^ Even in- 
firmities like those of a cross, resentful, and an- 
noying person in the family may be borne with 
serenity by those who are strong and recruit 
their strength daily by prayer to Christ. 

But does it ever appeal to you, dear young 
girl, to you, Marjorie or Dorothy, that a time 



23 



o 



Cheerful To-days and 

may come when your acquaintances may speak 
of you pityingly, as one who has ways, and 
moods, and who is not easy to get on with ? How 
would you like it, if, having grown older, you 
should observe that younger people were shy of 
being their real selves in your company ? That 
they repressed speech, and studied your expres- 
sion, and were afraid to be mirthful if you were 
in the room? Every middle-aged or elderly 
woman or man who has ever had this humiliat- 
ing experience was once young; and there was a 
beginning, when faults which are now blots upon 
his or her individualitv were so small that no one 
suspected their existence. 

The lesson for us, every one, is to be watchful 
of our manner; watchful of our words. We 
should daity seek to grow in unselfishness and in 
likeness to the Saviour. Few of us will ever 
have the opportunity to perform great deeds of 
heroism, but to every one of us there is given the 
chance day by day to be sweet and gracious and 
winsome. No one who reads this need ever be- 
come, like poor Miss Dorinda, a dread to her 
friends and family if only she will begin now to 
cultivate the art of responsive kindness; if she 

will determine to be easy, not hard, to live with. 

234 



Trustful To-morrows 

From living together in the home the transi- 
tion is easy to living together in the church and 
in the community. We cannot separate our- 
selves from the people next door, nor from the 
acquaintances over the way, nor from the friends 
in the opposite pew. It still exists, though if we 
form our conclusions from observations taken in 
our great bustling cities we shall be quite ready 
to affirm that neighborliness is a thing of the 
past. One is more and more struck with the un- 
friendliness of a great town. You do not know 
— often you do not care to know — the people 
who live next door to you on either side, and the 
dwellers on the opposite corner or at the other 
end of the street are as remote from your con- 
sciousness as if they lived in Patagonia. It hap- 
pens not infrequently that you grow accustomed 
to certain familiar figures: an old gentleman 
with a gold-headed cane ; a lady who wears the 
dignity of her eighty years as she does her satin 
cloak and velvet bonnet. After a while these 
persons cease to be denizens of the street. They 
have growTi feeble and are remaining indoors, 
or they have faded out of life. The brisk busi- 
ness man who goes at the same hour each morn- 
ing to his office or shop, who catches a certain 

235 



Cheerful To-days and 

car at the corner, becomes known to yon as a 
resident in the vicinity, but you have no particu- 
lar curiositv about his name or circumstances. 

One day you go home from a round of visits, 
or from your own business office, and you see a 
MTcath of flowers on the door-bell of the neigh- 
boring house, and people going in and out, and 
you are aware that that gray and shadowy angel, 
who impartially visits every home in the world 
when its turn comes, has crossed your neigh- 
bor's threshold. But it is nothing to you. Pos- 
sibly you inquire the circumstances ; very likely 
you remind yourself that you did not know the 
person in life, and that j^ou have no right to in- 
trude with inquiries or sympathy upon the sur- 
vivors — ^who have their own friends and do not 
need you. 

If you have had your early home in a sociable, 
friendly village where everybody knew everybody 
else, where it was the custom to hob-nob over the 
garden gate with the man next door — ^where the 
whole town rejoiced when some great honor or 
happiness came to a child of the place and the 
whole town grieved when there was a corre- 
sponding sorrow — you feel very lonesome and 

desolate in your first plunge into city life. 

236 



Trustful To-mokrows 

Do not, however, forget that in our country 
there are man)' phases of life ; and that while a 
nomad instinct has brought man}^ wayfarers to 
the city, to find the solitude of crowds, yet there 
still are joy and love and friendliness in many 
smaller towns and villages and along the pleasant 
country-side. It still happens that a neighbor 
in one of these blessed smaller places, finding 
herself suddenly able to take a week's journey 
with her husband, may call upon her friend next 
door to mother her brood while she is gone. !N'ot 
long ago, in a lovely Southern town where I was 
visiting, I called upon a beautiful and childless 
woman whose charming home was at the mo- 
ment fairly overflowing with juvenile life. Lit- 
tle white-haired boys and girls were playing on 
the veranda with their dolls and little carts, a 
motherly black nurse sat on the door-step with 
a dimpled baby in her arms, and my friend ob- 
served: "My neighbor has gone to California 
and I am taking care of her children for her 
until she returns.'^ Could sisterly kindness go 
farther than this ? For the friends were simply 
friends — not relatives — and this kind neighbor 
was taking on herself the responsibility of look- 
ing after the possible accidents which might be- 



237 



Cheerful To-days and 

fall a flock of restless boys, the possible croups 
and fevers which might attack the little ones in 
the night, while the mother went happily away 
on her journey without a care; knowing how 
safe her children would be in the hands of her 
friend. 

In the same city, if company unexpectedly ar- 
rives and the dessert is not sufficient, near neigh- 
bors are quite willing to go without theirs that 
the friend whose o-uests have come mav not find 
herself at a loss. Pies and puddings, creams and 
custards, are sent over the back fence; and in 
one instance, when a husband unexpectedly 
brought home with him three old college-mates 
who had dropped in upon him from space, his 
wife, knowing that the modest steak provided 
for dinner would not satisfy these hungry appe- 
tites, went confidently to her neighbor next door. 
Axi exchange was presently effected, and a goodly 
roast smoking from the oven made its appear- 
ance on the table where it was needed, while the 
steak changed hands and sufficed for the wants 
of the family who had no company. This kind 
of pleasant, unofficial neighborliness has not 
departed from a thousand of our Southern 

towns, from our ]S'ew England villages, and 

238 



Trustful To-morrows 

from our blessed country homes in any part of 
the land. 

In our cities we have many advantages; as, 
for example^ the trained nurse, who comes at 
a moment's call in the hour of calamity or anx- 
iety or of severe illness, but in country places 
where the trained nurse is not easily attainable 
there are yet to be found kind and motherly 
women with fa cult v, women who understand 
nursing, and who come to a household in its 
hour of extremity and do their womanly best. 
'*My husband lay at death^s door for weeks/^ said 
a friend to me. "I don^t know what I should 
have done if mv neio^hbors had not taken turns 
in helping me care for him.^^ Thinking of in- 
stances like this one repeats the old Bible phrase 
with thankfulness, "Better is a neighbor that is 
near than a brother that is far off /^ 

I question if we do not lose a great deal by 
limiting our neighborly acquaintance and our 
neicfhborlv interchano^e of kindness as we do in 
our town life. Many a time there is an aching 
heart not far off which we may cheer. Often, 
if we would encourage the impulse, we might be- 
come pleasantly acquainted with people divided 

from us only by a narrow partition wall, and it 

239 



Cheerful To-days axd 

would do us good and not evil to come in touch 
with their lives. There is a certain sadness in 
the thought that we sometimes miss an acquaint- 
ance and after a little interval of days or weeks 
inquire what has become of her, and are told 
that she was buried at such a time. We might 
at least have gone to take a look at the still face 
or laid a flower upon the coffin. That act of 
kindness would not have hurt us, and it might 
have been balm and sweetness to some wounded 
and mourning heart. 

Indoors at Night 

Keen and cold is the wintry blast 

As the sleet and snow go driving past ; 

There's a strife in the old trees, racked and bent, 

The clouds hang low o'er the firmament, 

But the household gathers safe and warm, 

Folded close from the freezing storm ; 

The lamp is lighted, the hearth is bright, 

And the dear ones are cozy indoors at night. 

And when shutters are closed and curtains drawn. 
And the toiling hours of the day are gone, 
Sweet words are spoken, good nights are said 
To the wee ones tucked in the little bed. 
(God's grace watch over each curly head!) 
Then with book, and talk, and the dear old song 
We have loved since the days when we were young, 
We will fill the hours with love's delight, 
Cozy and happy indoors at night. 

240 



Trustful To-:mokrows 

Trust 

I know not if to-morrow 

Shall bless me like to-day ; 
Of night I sometimes borrow 

Dark clouds and shadows gray ; 
For sinful, sick and weary, 

Of this I still am sure : 
No clouds or shadows dreary 

Shall my sweet heaven obscure. 

Oh, much is left uncertain 

In this strange life below ; 
But faith lifts up the curtain 

And sees the inner glow ; 
And nothing now can move me, 

Nor shake m.y joy so pure ; 
For Christ has stooped to love me, 

And of his love I'm sure. 

If the Loed Should Come 

If the Lord should come in the morning 

As I went about my work — 
The little things and the quiet things 

That a servant cannot shirk. 
Though nobody ever sees them. 

And only the dear Lord cares 
That they always are done in the light of the sun- 

AYould he take me unawares? 

If my Lord should come at noonday, 

The time of the dust and heat, 
When the glare is white, and the air is still, 

And the hoof-beats sound in the street — 
If my dear Lord came at noonday. 

And smiled in my tired eyes. 
Would it not be sweet his look to meet? 

Would he take me by surprise? 

241 



Cheerful To-days and 

If my Lord came hither at evening, 

In the fragrant dew and dusk, 
When the world drops off its mantle 

Of daylight like a husk 
And flowers in wonderful beauty. 

And we fold our hands and rest, 
Would his touch of my hand, his low command. 

Bring me unhoped-for zest? 

Why do I ask and question? 

He is ever coming to me, 
Morning and noon and evening, 

If I have but eyes to see. 
And the daily load grows lighter, 

The daily cares grow sweet, 
For the Master is near, the Master is here, 

I have only to sit at his feet. 

Good Intentions 

What wonderful things we have planned. Love, 

What beautiful things we have done. 
What fields we have tilled, what gifts we have willed. 

In the light of another year's sun ! 
When we think of it all we are baffled. 

There's so much that never comes true ; 
Because, Love, instead of our doing. 

We're always just meaning to do. 

The friends we are wanting to help. Love, 

They struggle alone and forlorn, 
By trial and suffering vanquished, 

Perchance by temptation o'erborne : 
But the lift, and the touch, and the greeting 

That well might have aided them through 
The perilous strait of ill-fortune, 

'They miss : we're but meaning to do. 

242 



Trustful To-morrows 

We dream of a fountain of knowledge ; 

We loiter along on its brink, 
And toy with the crystalline waters, 

Forever just meaning to drink. 
Night falls, and our tasks are unfinished, 

Too late our lost chances we rue, 
Dear Love, while our comrades were doing 

We only were meanits^g to do. 

Betake Thyself to Prayer 

When bitter winds of trouble blow. 
And thou art tossing to and fro. 
When waves are rolling mountain high, 
And clouds obscure the steadfast sky. 
Fear not, my soul ; thy Lord is there. 
Betake thyself, my soul, to prayer. 

When in the dull routine of life 

Thou yearnest half for pain and strife, 

So weary of the commonplace. 

Of days that wear the self -same face, 

Think softly, soul ; thy Lord is there. 

And then betake thyself to prayer. 

When brims thy cup with sparkling joy, 
When happy tasks the hours employ. 
When men with praise and sweet acclaim 
Upon the highway speak thy name, 
Then, soul, I bid thee have a care ; 
Seek oft thy Lord in fervent prayer. 

If standing where two pathways meet, 
Each beckoning thy pilgrim feet, 
Thou art in doubt which road to take. 
Look up, and say : "For thy dear sake — - 
O Master ! show thy footprints fair — 
I'd follow thee.*' Christ answers prayer. 

243 



Cheerful To-days and 

The tempter oft, with wilj" toil, 
Seeks thee, my soul, as precious spoil ; 
His weapons never lose their edge, 
But thou art Heaven's peculiar pledge. 
Though Satan rage, thy Lord is there — 
Dear soul, betake thyself to prayer. 

244 



Trustful To-mokrows 



CHAPTER XXV 
With Level Eyes 

**1 HAD never realized my mother as an in- 
dividual/' said a grown daughter, ^^mtil she 
came to visit our college at commencement. To 
me she had always been just ^mother' — the dear- 
est, best, most tender and considerate of moth- 
ers ; but I never compared her with any one, or 
saw her as she was to others, or thought of her as 
a noble woman, able to hold her own anywhere, 
till I looked at her away from her own back- 
ground. At last I saw her with level eyes, and I 
was proud of my mother.'^ 

To the mother it comes almost with a shock, 

that her daughter, the little girl whom she 

cradled in her arms, whose little frocks she sat 

up at night to finish, whose goings to and fro 

she ordained, who was hers to rule and to guide, 

has become a personality, herself gro^vn up. 

When the daughter abides in the household, 

slipping by unmarked stages from childhood 

into vouth, from vouth into maturitv, the older 
17 245 



Cheerful To-days and 

woman often fails to notice that the younger has 
emerged from the period of pupilage and re- 
straint, and too long holds fast to the reins of 
authority which should not be held over one 
whose responsibilities are those of the adult 
human beingo We often meet undeveloped 
daughters even in this period of assertive 
womanhood; daughters who dwell in their 
fathers^ houses v/ith little freedom of action, 
with no private purse, and with the coercion of 
child life, long after the sweetness and the de- 
pendence of childish days are over. 

I have known women whose faces bore tell- 
tale lines of discontent, whose brown hair began 
to show threads of silver, and who chafed under 
their lack of personal freedom, yet felt entirely 
helpless to change the aspect of affairs. Their 
mothers had never discovered that the children 
were grown up. They still exacted the peculiar 
deference and obedience due from a child under 
tutors and governors to those who bore rule over 
him or hero A daughter might be forty, but she 
could not go on a visit, or buy a new gown, or 
join a class or a club, or do anything, small or 
great, without asking and obtaining her moth- 

er^s consento 

246 



Tbusteul To-morrows 

At a glance one sees how limiting and dwarf- 
ing such a condition must be. Of necessity, and 
for lovers sake, daughters must always be defer- 
ential to mothers, but there comes a day when 
they must stand on their own feet and answer 
for their own actions. Married, they at once 
take this independent place in the world; so that 
a bride of eighteen may have more actual free- 
dom than a spinster of thirty. But w'hen a 
woman is grown up, whether single or married, 
she is entitled to the privileges of her age. And 
if parents are wise, and can possibly afEord it, 
they will secure to the daughter at home, not 
self-supporting and living under their roof, 
enough money regularly given, as an allowance, 
to keep her from feeling like a mendicant or a 
pauper. If they cannot do this, and the daugh- 
ter desires it, they should interpose no objection 
to her going out from home to engage in what- 
ever employment she is best fitted for or for 
which she can most readily receive training. 

When our daughters front us "^Vith level 
eyes^^ something beyond motherhood and child- 
hood enters into the relation. A higher friend- 
ship, a fuller sympathy, a dearer bond may coma 

with the years, and, being possible, should cer- 

247 



Cheerful To-days and 

tainly come to pass in great sweetness and 
strength. 

We live in a period of which a certain marked 
unrest on the part of our young women is a sig- 
nificant feature. Girlhood has been said by a 
thoughtful observer to be not altogether a happy 
time of life, though it is so happy-looking. To 
whatever cause it may be due, economic or other- 
wise, whether owino^ to the richer intellectual 
culture or to the growing independence of the 
eex, or the greater need of money and the mul- 
tiplied doors of occupation in professional and 
business life swinging open at a woman's touch, 
the fact is patent that home no longer attracts 
cur girls as it once did. They are apt to look 
farther afield for their work. Many of them are 
eager to try their powers in the market-place; 
many of them have aspirations and ambitions 
which domesticit}" does not wholly satisfy. 

Our girls are not to be blamed for this con- 
dition of things, which is perhaps only a tem- 
porary phase and the sign of a transitional 
epoch. But I would ask the educated and ear- 
nest young woman of the day to weigh carefully 
the opportunities, privileges and obligations 

which the home and family offer, before she de- 

24S 



Trustful To-morrows 

€ides that there is a worthier sphere than this 
for the Christian woman. I believe profoundly 
that a happy marriage is the most blessed state 
into which woman can be called. I regard 
honored motherhood as the most queenly posi- 
tion in the earth to-day. If a good man loves a 
girl, and she consents to marry him, she will 
enter, however poor the two may be, however 
they may have to struggle, on a career far more 
useful and satisfying than any open to her as a 
wage-earner or a worker. Let the Christian 
woman illustrate in her home life the beautv of 
holiness. 

The mother has the first beginnings of life, 
the molding and the guiding of childhood. The 
Christian mother can hardly help bringing her 
little ones to Christ. 

Daughters and sisters should show loving at- 

tention to father and brothers in the home, and 

there comes a day when mothers are tired, or 

perhaps ill, and they, too, need sorely the tender 

and patient ministry of the young lives which 

but lately were dependent on their care. To 

Christian daughters I would say, ^^Be loving 

and sweet to your mothers.^^ 

The other day, as I sat by my window, I was 

249 



Cheerpul To-days and 

the observer of a little incident which set in 
motion the train of thought reaching from my 
quiet home to you^ wherever you are. I live on 
a street which has a smooth asphalt pavement 
greatly in favor with wheelmen and women^ and 
there are few hours between morning and bed- 
time when young people are not flying up and 
down its lengths on their magical machines. 

A very pi*etty girl came sweeping along^ man- 
aging her bicycle with the graceful ease of a con- 
fident and skillful rider. Her face was glowing 
with healthy her dress was most becomings and 
her whole air was that of one accustomed to the 
courtesies of polite society^ and used^ on her own 
part^ to much gentleness and consideration. 
Yet^ when another girl^ evidently a novice^ 
swerved awkwardly and narrowly escaped col- 
liding with her^^the pretty young woman shocked 
and amazed the observer in the shadow of 
the curtains by exclaiming^ angrily^ ^^Great 
Scott! I wish you would look where you are 
going !^^ 

There was a bit of wholly unconscious revela- 
tion of character. I saw that my beautiful 
maiden was not like the king's daughter^ ^^all 

glorious within.^' She had caught^ perhaps from 

250 



Trustful To-morrows 

a schoolboy brother^ the trick of slang; she was 
impatient, she was hasty of speech and temper, 
and she failed to make allowance for the inex- 
perience of another. I was saddened, and I 
wished with my Whole heart that the young girl 
could realize how unfortunate for herself was 
the frame of mind and the habit of petulance 
which had made possible her impetuous remon- 
strance. Life may discipline her by greater 
trials than the clumsy blunder of a fellow tray- 
eler on the road, and by and by she may learn to 
repress the vehement word of irritation. But 
what I long for, when I think of her, and of 
thousands like her, is that they may not feel the 
impulse to hasty vexation with the errors or 
even with the carelessness of others. It is a 
noble thing so to live that the 'face, manner, 
voice, and what the Bible aptly terms ^Valk and 
conversation,^^ are the expressions of inward 
poise, serenity and sweetness. 

^"'Such a one does not love her sister,^^ said a 
friend not long ago, coming from a home where 
an invalid had been lying at death^s door for 
weeks. 

^^Why do you think so?^^ was the inquiry, a 

very natural one in the circumstanceSo 

251 



Cheerful To-days and 

''I notice," the reply came slowly, ^^that she 
has nothing to say of Jean's sufferings, or of 
Jean's marvelous patience and fortitude ; that 
she is only impressed with Jean's occasional for- 
getfulness to thank her for a kindness, and that 
she dwells mainly on her own fatigue, and the 
number of invitations she has had to decline 
owing to this ill-timed illness on Jean's part. 
Love suffereth long, and is kind; love vaunteth 
not itself, is not easily provoked ; therefore, love 
would lead the sister who is well to take a dif- 
ferent tone about the sister who is laid aside on 
a bed of pain." 

*^She would disclaim anj^ lack of affection," 
said the other ; ^^and there is the excuse for her, 
too, that she has had a long strain, and is tired." 

'^That last I grant ; nevertheless, whether she 
is or is not aware of it, she is not in love with 
Jean. The revelation on her part is entirely 
unconscious ; but it is a plain revelation." 

Perhaps you have often heard people say that 

what one is is of more consequence than what 

one does, and you have fancied the saying rather 

trite. It is, however, profoundly true. One who 

goes on his way living the Christ-life, brave, 

honest, fearless, imselfish and magnanimous. 

252 



Trustful To-morrows 

wins others to the Christ because he shows forth 

the spirit of the Master. One who has not kept 

his soul a spotless chamber for the indwelling 

Christ will constantly reveal, when he does not 

dream it, the insincerity of his professions. We 

must be good if we would do good. AYe must 

reveal ourselves in a thousand ways, whether we 

mean to or not; and if Christ be in us, as the 

lamp that guides, we shall j-eveal Christ. 

253 



CiiEERruL To-days and 



CHAPTER XXVI 

Young Women and Self-support 

All thoughtful observers must be aware of a 
significant change in the point of view as regards 
the relations of young women to the everyday 
world. In my girlhood it was not customary for 
the daughters of well-to-do men to engage in 
work outside the doors of their homes. A man 
took it for granted that his boys should study 
for a profession^ acquire a trade, or enter upon 
business life. ^"^John Smith & Sons'^ was in the 
anticipated order of things. There is an old and 
well-known house on Broadway, New York, to- 
day, of which the style is ^^John So-and-So, Sons 
& Sons.^^ This is really a survival of what 
was formerly the almost invariable routine. A 
man did not expect his girls to become bread- 
winners while he was alive to earn their bread, 
and people would have been rather shocked in 
that conservative time at the idea of Mary's be- 
coming a reporter, Charlotte a saleswoman, Ma- 
tilda a nurse, Eebecca a visiting housekeeper. 

The young ladies helped their mother at home^ 

254 



Trustful To-morrows 

did a good deal of niirsiiig when any one was ill, 
were kind and neighborly, made their own 
frocks on occasion, shopped, visited, were shel- 
tered, protected, and regarded as ornaments to 
the family circle. Sometimes a girl taught; 
once in a while one wrote and had poems and 
stories published, but rather under the rose. It 
was not a thing to be bruited about in common 
talk, nor proclaimed from the housetops. Gen- 
erally girls married in the later teens, or the 
early twenties, and one who did not marry be- 
fore twenty-six was, poor child, called rather 
pityinglj^ an old maid, and had a sort of nimbus 
of commiseration around her head until she was 
forty, when her spinsterhood was taken as a mat- 
ter of course, and, unless she wedded a widower 
with a large family of growing children, she be- 
came the unofficial aunt at large of the whole 
community. 

We used to hear of failures in business which 
were openly attributed to the extravagance of 
Brown^s wife and daughters. Poor man ! he had 
to pay for their dresses and diamonds, their car- 
riage and horses, and he went under. Have yon 
noticed that one does not often hear such a mis- 

fortune in these days thus accounted for? A 

255 



Cheerful To-days and 

man comes to wreck in the business world of 
this period because of too little capital^ or too 
much expansion^ or too great competition^ or 
too entire trust in the honest)^ of others; not 
because he has a train of women tugging at his 
heels and clamoring for gewgaws and furbelows. 
The point of view has entirely changed. 

It was once a very common thing to be told 
that a man had remained a bachelor for the 
reason — accepted as a valid one hj his friends 
and society — that he had sisters whom he must 
support. Poor Dennis could not afford to choose 
a wife — there were Charlotte and Clarrissa who 
were unmarried^ and for them he must provide 
life's bread and butter every day and life's pot 
of honey when he could. And people thought 
this as it should be. A man^ of course^ was 
bound to provide for his female relatives. That 
they should be sent out to battle with the world 
did not accord with conventional ideas of pro- 
priety. 

The Civil War, among its other upheavals, 

brought about the first radical change in this 

state of things. So many men died in battle or 

in hospital, so many men came home crippled or 

permanently disabled, that women, thrust from 

256 



Trustful To-mokrows 

the nest^ were forced to enter fields hitherto pre- 
empted by men. Widows and orphans found 
that clerkships could be filled by them as by their 
husbands, fathers and brothers in the past. A 
study of statistics shows how sweeping and re- 
markable and rapid a change in the labor market 
was due to the Civil War. 

Then, closely following this epoch, came the 
beginning of what we loosely call the higher 
education of women. The entrance of women 
on the business world speedily made evident the 
fact that a different sort of training was needed 
from that given in the excellent academies and 
schools from which refined, sweet and capable 
women had hitherto emerged. Colleges for 
women must exist, with curriculums as com- 
prehensive and examinations as rigid as those 
belonging to colleges for men. 

The second generation of women graduates 
will soon be fairly launched upon our country 
and ready to take a hand in its affairs. Our 
girls of to-day, whether their fathers be rich or 
poor, are, almost universally, eagerly reaching 
forward to careers. They scorn dependence. 
Far from accepting what parents are often anx- 
ious to give, many girls are restless and unhappy 

257 



Cheerful To-days and 

unless or until they can secure a place where 
the}^ may test their powers, show their mettle, 
and earn and keep a foothold for themselves. 

One cannot but at times regret that the pen- 
dulum has swung so very far in the other direc- 
tion, so that to-day comparatively few J^oung 
women, let their circumstances be easy or the 
reverse, are contented to settle doAvn and become 
that beautiful and attractive personage, the 
dauo'hter of the home. One feels a certain svm- 
pathy with fathers and mothers growing old, 
and longing for the companionship of j'outh in 
the f amil)^ when one observes how very gener- 
ally the girl, leaving school and college, finds the 
domestic routine wearisome, and looks about 
her for any outside work which may come to her 
hand. ^"^I have no need to support myself, and 
no special talent for one thing more than an- 
other,^^ said a girl the other day, ^"^but I simply 
cannot go back to the little dead and alive village 
where I spent my childhood and vegetate there 
as mv mother has done all her life.^^ I cannot 
but believe that there is something at fault in 
the education which suffers young women tc 
keep in lines so narrow, which allows them to be 

so franklv self -considerate, and which fails to 

258 



Trustful To-mokrows 

show them that there is nowhere in the land the 
sphere so obscure and so limited that a Christian 
woman may not there let her light shine. 

The army of poor girls^ girls who must earn 
their living or be paupers^ is so large^ and its 
needs are so imperative^ that rich girls^ by whom 
I mean all girls who have no necessity to be self- 
supporting^ should think most seriously before 
they increase the pressure on the labor markets 
This remark applies particularly to such girls 
as the one whose declaration I have just quoted; 
for genius is a law nnto itself^ and a recognized 
vocation should be respected^ if it be for science^ 
art^ or any department of human effort. Phi- 
lanthropy has so many openings for well-to-do 
girls. Broadly speakings however, rich girls 
shonld not crowd their poorer sisters to the wall 
unless they are very sure that the highest duty 
requires it ; a call higher than caprice or the de- 
sire to be independent, the real call of dutjj 
^^stern daughter of tlie voice of God.^^ 

The old complaint that men are more highly 

paid than women for services of the same char= 

acter is largely modified in our period. The 

labor organizations have protective legislation 

for women on this very subject, and the profes- 

259 



Cheerful To-days axd 

sional woman, if able and successful, is paid for 
her work according to its value, and no discount 
is made for sex. The vast volume of women 
pressing into stenography and typewriting, 
and into sliops, may help to cut down the general 
rate of salaries, but there is not now the unfair 
discrimination in favor of men which was once a 
crying evil. One poorly-paid profession, that of 
teaching, never estimated at its true worth when 
the matter is of salarj^, still holds to old stand- 
ards, and a man devoting his time and talents 
to teaching receives more money at the end of 
his term than a woman can command for equal 
service rendered. But the conditions of the 
labor market are much more Just, so far as 
women are in concern, than they used to be. 
Also, the standard is higher, and a woman is 
more rigidty held to the best possible work than 
in the past. 

Our self-supporting girls are, in the cities, 
learning to create households of their own; a 
half dozen artists, journalists, students of music 
or business women combine their means, rent a 
small apartment, secure an elder sister or a 
mother as their chaperone, engage a maid, and 

live, so cosily and charmingly that the thought 

260 



Trustful To-morkows 

of marriage and a home of their individual own 
is much less attractive than it might be if they 
lived solitary lives in uncomfortable boarding 
houses. This is^ perhaps^ not to be regretted; 
since marriage^ for any reason except the com- 
pelling reason of sincere and uncalculating love, 
is verv undesirable and somethino; less than 
sacred, and should not be entered upon by 
woman or man. Still, one notes, as indicative 
of the temper of the hour, a growing indifference 
to marriage on the part of our educated young 
people. 

When the march begins in the morning, 
And the heart and the foot are light ; 

When the flags are all a-flutter, 
And the world is gay and bright ; 

When the bugles lead the column, 

And the drums are proud in the van. 
It's shoulder to shoulder, forward, march ! 

Ah I let him lag who can ! 

For it's easy to march to mu&ic 

With your comrades all in line, 
And you don't get tired, you feel inspired, 

And life is a draught divine. 

When the march drags on at evening 

And the color-bearer's gone ; 
When the merry strains are silent 

That piped so brave in the dawn ; 
18 261 



Cheerful To-days and 

When you miss the dear old fellows 

Who started out with you ; 
When it's stubborn and sturdy, forward, march ! 

Though the ragged lines are few ; 

Then it's hard to march in silence. 
And the road has lonesome grown, 

And life is a bitter cup to drink, 
But the soldier must not moan. 

And this is the task before us, 

A task we may never shirk ; 
In the gay time and the sorrowful time 

We must march and do our w^ork. 

We must march when the music cheers us, 

March when the strains are dumb. 
Plucky and valiant, forward, march ! 

And smile, whatever may come. 

For, whether life's hard or easy, 

The strong man keeps the pace ; 
For the desolate march and the silent 

The strong soul finds the grace. 

262 



Trustful To-morrows 



CHAPTEE XXVII 
Counting the Blessings 

Because our griefs and cares loom large npon 
the horizon of our life they are apt to overcloud 
OTir sky and cover onr pathway with darkness. 
It is a good plan when tempted to depression to 
connt our blessings. Even the griefs may be 
blessings in disguise^ since 

"God moves in a mysterious way 

His wonders to perform, 
He plants his footsteps in the sea 

And rides upon the storm ;" 

but there are obvious snnshiny^ beantifnl and 
glad experiences in onr days which we cannot 

but enumerate if^ with fair and candid minds, 
we look at their tenor and think of the good hand 
of onr Grod. 

First, there are the blessings which accom- 
pany onr ordinary health. For many reasons 
the ayerage rate of health in most communities 
is higher than it formerly was. People under- 
stand that there are hygienic laws to be fol- 

263 



Cheerful To-days and 

lowed; that sleep^ and food^ and exercise^ com- 
fortable clothing and ventilation have their 
place in keeping men and women well. We 
often sin against the bod}% by overwork or by 
over indulgence^ and nature makes her reprisals, 
but if we treat the body with the right degree 
of respect and with common sense we may usu- 
ally be free from illness. Health means ability 
to do our work, it means an even disposition, it 
means nerves sheathed against pain and weari- 
ness; it implies strength in reserve, so that we 
do not always draw upon our balance but have 
something left over for an emergency. Surely 
among our chief mercies we should include 
health, with its attendant grace of serenity, its 
capacity for enjoyment and its basis for enthu- 
siasm. 

Among everyday blessings we may next men- 
tion our homes. What joy to turn one's own 
latch-key at night. What pleasure in laying the 
tired head on one's own pillow. I never see the 
crowds of toilers going home after a hard day's 
work without a pleasant thought of the many 
little household fires, the children's tumultuous 
rush to meet their father, the mother's sweet 

face smiling in the background. "Be it ever so 

264 



Trustful To-morrows 

humble there's no place like home/' It may be 
two rooms, it may be a log cabin, it may be a 
sumptuous mansion ; the accident of broad acres 
or a tiny back yard, of splendor or of poverty, 
does not affect the home. That is made by the 
dwellers under the roof ; by the love, the gentle- 
ness, the sweet converse, the common aims and 
interests of the family. Bless God for home 
and a loving greeting may well be our constant 
prayer. 

In every city there are a great multitude of 
homeless persons, not tramps, nor beggars, but 
young men who pay for board and lodging, spin- 
sters who have no one closely belonging to them, 
units who stand alone, solitary who are not in 
families. The church, the Sunday school, in the 
great Methodist household of faith the Epworth 
League, in other denominations the Christian 
Endeavor Society, or perhaps some beneficent 
brotherhood or guild, tries to give these lonely 
ones the substitute for home. The Young Men's 
and Young Women's Christian Associations 
wisely and bravely do what they can. But every 
single Christian home should at times open its 
doors to the unhomed, asking them to the fire- 
side and the board, bringing them into the 

265 



Cheerful To-days and 

charmed circle, and thus arming them against 
temptation, and providing them with a share in 
the home's blessings. 

Another mercy is opportunity. Be it of what 
order it may it is one of God's greatest gifts. 
None are without it. Some have it offered in 
larger measure than others. Whatever the op- 
portunity may be it is God's open door for you 
into which you may enter; so count it among 
your blessings. 

Still another source of joy in life comes to 
us in our children, in our watching their de- 
velopment, in our hope for their future. And 
our kindred beyond the immediate household, 
our friends, our neighbors — we cannot omit 
them from any enumeration of our blessings. 

Perhaps we do not often stop to count our 
church privileges as among our closest joys and 
our greatest occasions for gratitude. Back of 
our place in the world's arena is the closet into 
which we retreat for strength, and our closet is 
our Holy of Holies ; but there is the little prayer- 
circle, and the larger praj^er-meeting, and the 
assembly of God's people, and the word spoken 
by the preacher — all as the wind in the sails that 

Bends the vessel onward. There are the summer 

266 



Trustful To-morrows 

gatherings of the saints yearning for a deeper 
spiritual life; there are the meetings in the win« 
ter when we pray unitedly for revival, and lo I 
from the heart of heaven comes the kindling 
flame and our souls are burned free from their 
vrorldlv dross and seven times refined. In sad 
case is that Christian disciple, in woeful case 
that Christian congregation, that has no desire 
to be revived and seeks not the fanning and the 
winnowing of the Holy Ghost. 

To leave out of our list of blessings the daily 
strife with untoward events, the daily pressure 
of the uncongenial, would be to doubt God's wis- 
dom and goodness. "Who art thou,'' says Car- 
lyle, "that complainest of thy life of toil ? Com- 
plain not. Complain not. Look up, my wearied 
brother, see thy fellow Workmen there, in God's 
Eternity ; surviving there, they alone surviving : 
sacred Band of the Immortals, celestial Body- 
guard of the Empire of Mankind. ... To 
thee. Heaven, though severe, is not unkind. 
Heaven is kind — as a noble mother; as that 
Spartan mother, saying, while she gave her son 
his shield, ^ith it, my son, or upon it !' Thou 
too shalt return liome in honor — to thy far- 
distant home in honor ; doubt it not — if in the 

267 



Cheerful To-days and 
battle thou keep thy shield. . . . Complain 

not r 

This strikes a high note. A higher yet they 
strike who not only refrain from complaint but 
accept with thankfulness and glad acquiescence 
in the blessed will of God every single incident, 
every single companion, every single experience 
which God sends on the journey; counting each 
in its degree a blessing. 

Says Faber, and we can never quote him too 
often : 

"My heart swells within me in thankfulest joy 
For the faith Which to me thou hast given ; 

For in all thine amazing abundance of gifts 
Thou hast no better gift short of heaven. 

**There was darkness in Egypt while Israel had sun, 
And the songs in the cornfields of Goshen were gay ; 

And the chosen that dwelt 'mid the heathen moved on 
Each threading the gloom with his own private day. 

"Ah ! so is it now with the church of thy choice ; 

Her lands lie in light which to worldlings seems dim ; 
And each child of that church who must live in dark 
realms 

Has a sun o'er his head which is only for him." 

Among our daily blessings should we not 

dwell lovingly upon every little bit of work 

which we are permitted to do for our Lord? 

On this busy Monday^ when the housewife has 

" 268 



Trustful To-morrows 

her somewhat unusual burdens, she may drop a 
word to the maid in the kitchen which may 
brighten the day for the maid. The lady going 
about her shopping may invite the saleswoman 
behind the counter to attend a gospel meeting 
in the evening ; may promise to be there herself 
with a sisterly welcome. To each of us, not alone 
to the ministers ordained and set apart, but to 
each of us who has joined the company of the 
Master is a ministry of grace appointed; and 
it is our crown of rejoicing that we may find 
the place for it wherever we go. It may be at 
home, it may be on a journey, it may be on the 
steamer crossing the ocean, it may be in the con- 
veyance, car or boat, which takes one from house 
to office, it may be on the farm — wherever you 
are, and Christ is, and there is a third person yet 
to be brought to Christ — there is a blessed op- 
portunity for service. 

Best and dearest blessing of all is ours when 
we can comprehend even a little of the great love 
of our Lord, and for a little time lose ourselves 
in adoration of him. 

"When Jesus went from Bethany 

Joy bloomed before him like the May. 

The beauty and the mystery 

Of something heavenly brimmed the day." 

269 



Cheerful To-days and 

When Jesus comes to any earthly home the light 

as of the Father's face enters there and abides. 

When Jesus goes forth the light remains, for the 

beloved sroes forth too, and walks with the Mas- 

ter all the day long, and at night the Master 

returns and sups with his disciple. Who shall 

measure such divine blessedness? 

270 



Teustful To-morrows 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

LooKixG UNTO Jesus 

There are many roads to the house of good 
cheer — roads of congenial associations^ of pleas- 
ant employments^ of joy in attainments, and of 
happy endeavors. But the road which is 
straightest and surest is the road at the entrance 
of which is inscribed ^'^Looking unto Jesus/^ 
They who look unto their Lord as the flower 
turns to the sun cannot lose the wav to ease of 
mind and hope of heart, to cheerful to-days and 
trustful to-morrows. Safe with Jesus is their 
past, serene in Jesus is their present, secure in 
Jesus is their future. Forever, thus looking 
and waiting, they renew their strength. They 
may be old, they may be suffering, thej^ may be 
in prison, they may be nigh unto death, but 
conditions matter not; the disciples, looking 
unto Jesus, see his face smiling on them and 
nothing can detract froni their courage. 

"Jesus, my Love, my chief delight, 
For thee I long, for thee I pray, 

Amid the shadows of the night, 
Amid the burdens of the day." 
271 



Cheerful To-days axd 

Eapt in the ecstasy of adoration^ what trial or 
trouble can weigh the Christian down ? Do we 
look unto Jesus in worship^ as we ought? Is 
our earliest waking thought of his goodness and 
his beaut 3^ ? Do we dwell on his grace, remem- 
bering him as the chiefest among ten thousand 
and altogether lovely? It was said of Eobert 
McCheyne, of Dundee, Scotland, that he so com- 
muned with Jesus that his prayers and his ser- 
mons dripped with the perfume of his love, and 
that he so enjoyed that love-letter of the Old 
Testament, the Song of Solomon, that he had 
found texts for discourses in its every chapter. 

Ah, friends, our heart's longing, our heart's 
crj^ should be for Jesus, so that our looking unto 
him might be always in worshipful adoration. 

"My soul amid this stormy world 

Is like some fluttered dove, 
And fain would be as swift of wing 

To flee to him I love." 

Our looking unto Jesus too must be that we 
may receive his orders and be quick to obey 
them. To one who saw him through the rifted 
skies, one arrested on his way to commit a great 
crime against the saints, Christ revealed him- 
self in a glimpse of fire, and from that moment 

272 



Trustful To-morrows 

Paul's looking was merged in an earnest, rever- 
ent petition : '^Lord, what wilt thon have me to 
do T^ We know how delightful is the home life 
where each wills to do the other's will, and God's 
will is triumphant over all. Any life which 
looks up constantly to Christ, in entire submis- 
sion and joyful desire to hear and obey, must be 
full of cheer, and equally so must any home thus 
keyed to perfect harmony be a place of blessed- 
ness. 

We need to examine ourselves to discover 
whether we are making any reservation in our 
yielding to the will of the Master. We are some- 
times reluctant to engage in a plain duty because 
our taking part in it will render us conspicuous, 
or lest we shall be charged with inconsistency by 
those whom we meet. Looking unto Jesus, there 
should be no withholding of anything we have, 
no withdrawal of anything we are, when our 
Captain bids us advance; there should be no 
regretting thought or fretfulness when he tells 
us to stay where we are and be for a time inac- 
tive. There are those whom he seems to lay for 
a while on the shelf ; if this be his will, we must 
find our joy and our reward in thus awaiting his 

pleasure. 

273 



Cheerful To-days and 

We may look unto Jesus from the desk, from 
the army post, from the tent, from the anvil. 
Surely our looking should be so evident that 
those around us will recognize us for children 
of the King. ^^I sat by a man for ten years/' 
said one, "we did our work side by side, but I 
never dreamed that he was a Christian." The 
man may have had a similar absence of impres- 
sion concerning the speaker. 

In politics men are not slow to show the side 
they take. Why should they be less awake to the 
need of showing their colors when their relation 
to Christ is involved; in speech or in silence, 
shall not the truly earnest and sincere man find 
out a way to show where he stands ? 

Looking unto Jesus will keep us from being 
difficult to live with. Good people not a few 
are over sensitive, are easily hurt, are irritable 
about trifles. The remedy for the fretfulness 
which so often degenerates into morbidness is 
found in continual looking unto Jesus. 

In a partnership of complete affection the 

subconscious habit is one of resting upon and 

referring to the ceaseless love which each heart 

feels sure of; it is not with effort or with study 

that husband turns to wife or wife to husband 

274 



Trustful To-:morrows 

in the sweet intercourse of daily life and love. 
There is no jarring note, the melody is im- 
broken. 

Our Lord himself has compared to marriage. 
the closest of earthly friendships, the bond 
which nnites his church to him. The lookin.^ 
unto him of the Christian may become auto- 
matic, like breathino;; it mav never be inter- 
rupted; it may lift every day and hour into a 
mystic loveliness, such as floods the sunset sky 
when the gold and amber and opal of the West- 
ern horizon surpass in splendor the colors ever 
seen on any palette under the heavens them- 
selves. 

^^\Yho shall separate us from the love of 
Christ?^' They who know its inner sweetness^ 
its strength, and its amazing tenderness, know 
that, whatever else breaks, that cable will hold 
forever. 

**0 Jesus, Jesns, dearest Lord, 

Forgive me if I say, 
For very love, thy sacred name 

A thousand times a day. 

**For thou to me art all in all, 

My honor and my v^-ealth, 
^fy heart's desire, my body's strength. 

My souTs eternal health. 
275 



Cheerful To-days and 

"Burn, burn, O Love ! within my heart. 

Burn fiercely night and day. 
Till all the dross of earthly loves 

Is burned and burned away. 

"O Jesus ! Jesus ! sweetest Lord, 

What art Thou not to me? 
Each hour brings joy before unknown | 

Each day new liberty.'* 
276 



Trustful To- morrows 



CHAPTEK XXIX 
The Suxxy Heart 

We have many gray days in our winters^, but 
on the whole the davs of clearest sunshine far 
outnumber them. I heard a dear woman thank 
God the other day for havins: sent a brioiit 
afternoon for a meetings and I thought how 
right that was^ and how often we omitted to 
praise him for good weather. With the shep- 
herd of Salisbury Plain, we ought to be grate- 
ful for whatever weather comes, and when we 
reach that point of acquiescent praise we shall 
have sunny skies in the soul. 

^^Do 3^ou find it possible/^ said my friend 
Eleanora, ^^to be anything but perfunctory in 
your keeping of Thanksgiving? What does it 
amount to in j^our life ?'^ This was just before 
a Thanksgiving Day. 

^T hope, dear/^ I answered, ^^that I am mak- 
ing every day a day of giving thanks. I am 
sometimes overwhelmed when I beoin to count 
up my mercies ; they are so many, for the bright 

days so far exceed the dark ones, that I cannot 
"^ 19 277 



Cheerful To-days and 

help having a song in my heart all the tinae. 
But when Thanksgiving Day returns it always 
brings its own proi:)er observance with it — that 
is, if one is patriotic ; and, too, if one believes in 
God/^ 

Eleanora mused awhile. "I'm not sure that 
I am patriotic/' she said. "I want those poor 
men of ours to come home safelj^ from the 
Philippines, and I want peace to prevail on 
land and sea, and I don't wish to see the rich so 
very rich nor the poor so very poor, and I'm 
sure that saloons are rampageous, and that the 
Sabbath is profaned, and — for me — the times 
are out of joint, ^o, I am not really thankful.'^ 

^^I suppose we may all find points to criti- 
cise in the management of public affairs, and 
features in our social economy to regret ; but we 
have not the responsibility of ordering nor of 
carrying on the routine of this great nation, 
and therefore it is not worth while for us to be 
pessimistic or fault-finding. And just at this 
moment people are striving earnestly to put 
down intemperance, and, as never before, busi- 
ness is making a strong fight against it. A 
drinking man cannot hold a place on a railroad, 

nor in a factory, nor anywhere in which his 

278 



Trustful To-morrows 

habit of life can endanger other people's lives 
or menace valuable property. This one fact, 
if there were no other, is a mighty weapon of 
attack upon the saloon. 

^"^The remedy for our violation of the Sabbath 
will be found in a deepening of the spiritual 
life of individuals and in a quickening of the 
personal conscience. There is at the moment a 
wide spreading effort for revival, and all over 
our country, in groups and prayer circles and 
meetings. Christians are seeking the presence 
and power of the Lord. Once the Holy Spirit 
descends again in the church there will be a 
toning up of public sentiment on the Sabbath 
question and the world will respect the wish 
and follow the lead of God's people about ob- 
serving God's day. I think we should thank 
God especially, this year, for the signs of prom- 
ise in the sky.^^ 

This was a very long speech, and Eleanora rose 

when I had finished it, took her leave and went 

away. I was doubtful whether my monologue 

had done her any good. It at least set me to 

thinking quite seriously, and I began to go over 

in my own mind certain reasons for being very 

thankful in this good year of our Lord. 

279 



Cheerful To-days and 

Among positive occasions for gratitude at 
present our magnificent harvests come easily 
first. Never has there been a more tremendous 
yield of wheat and corn to reward the farmer. 
America may feed the world from her gran- 
aries if she choose. Our vineyards have been 
purple and black and white and ruby and am- 
ber with grapes which have been refreshing to 
the palate and beautiful to the eye. The vines 
have been weighted with the luscious store^ the 
clusters have been exquisite. Nature has sur- 
passed herself, and in lavish bounty has spread 
every board. Think of her oats, her rye, her 
pears, her cherries, her plums. And as for 
apples, in their choice varieties, in their fra- 
grant ripeness, in their splendid colorings and 
multitudinous array the year has been one of 
exceeding wealth. Seek-no-furthers, Baldwins, 
pippins, greenings — their names are on the 
orchard catalogue and their golden or ruby 
globes are in our bins and cellars. What would 
the housekeeper do without apples? What 
would the country boy do if he had no apples 
for his school luncheon or his evening feast ? 
Pies, and preserves and jellies, and many a 

toothsome puJff and pudding owe their sweet- 

280 



Trustful To-morrows 

ness to the apple, and 1899 wears as one of its 
peculiar jewels the glory of being an apple year. 
For fruit of the tree, of the bush, and the vine, 
let us give thanks. 

Looking over the last twelve months accidents 
and horrors and calamities have been compara- 
tively few, and dreadful crimes have been less 
frequent than usual. Also labor and capital 
seem better to have understood one another and 
the friction between them has been minimized. 
Taking it all in all, we have passed through a 
year of great internal tranquillity, of much 
general prosperity, and of notably good times. 
Shall we not therefore thank God and take 
courage? The Lord who has brought us thus 
far on our way will surely carry us through. 

When we come to the reckoning of personal 
reasons for thanksgiving every heart and every 
home must keep tally of its own delights. For 
health and strength, for the dear one's conva- 
lescence, for the pleasant outing, for the happy 
times among ourselves, for the new baby, for 
the lengthened life of honored old people, for 
the success of the son at college or in business, 
for our ships that have come safe home from 

long and perilous voyages on the tempestuous 

281 



Cheerful To-days and 

sea^ for our neighbors and friends, we must 
praise and thank the good Lord. 

For any new sight of the Master's face 
vouchsafed to us in the retirement of the closet, 
for help and stimulus which have come to us 
when we have read our Bible or heard a sermon, 
for any song in the night, we should not fail to 
render our thanks. In a world full of unknown 
possibilities, we are like children rocked in the 
cradle and crooned over by the mother, so good 
is our Lord to us every hour. 

We may have some negative reasons for 
thanksgiving too; in that things have been no 
worse: always a legitimate cause for praise. 
That we have had no Dre3^fus case to shame us 
in this nation must be enumerated among our 
reasons for grateful memory. We who have 
small boys may be glad that they are not oftener 
brought home to us maimed from the football 
field, and thankful that most of their wounds 
are so soon and so easilv healed. 

In all seriousness, friends, should we not take 
pains to cultivate a continual habit of thank- 
fulness? This would help to make us opti- 
mistic; we should not go about with long faces 

nor look too much on the dark side. The good 

282 



Trustful To-morrows 

hand of our God is upon ns, saving iis from 
dangers seen and unseen; let us therefore take 
the cup of thanksgiving and call upon his name. 

Our prayers are too often narrowed down to 
a mere asking for what we want^ a mere peti- 
tioning for favors at the throne. The soul rises 
into a purer ether and knows a dearer joy when 
pra5^er is largely composed of gratitude^ when 
we are lifted up in contemplation to heights of 
a divine and restful calm. 

A good exercise for you and for me just now 
might be with pencil and paper to set down, 
in orderly sequence, where we can plainly see 
them, our private reasons for being thankful 
to an overruling Providence. Then when 
Thanksgiving Day dawns let us go to church in 
the good old way to acknowledge national bless- 
ings, mercies to the commonwealth. 

Our dinner table will be happiest if we gather 
about it the whole clan, our kith and kin, from 
the silver-haired grandsire to the baby in the 
high chair, and the viands will taste the sweeter 
if we have sent a portion to the widow around 
the corner, to the ragged little newsboy, to the 
out-at-elbows tramp tempted for once by fire 
and food to enter a beneficent mission. Do not 



Cheerful To-days and 

let us forget the college settlement, nor the in- 
dustrial homes, the orphanage, nor any other 
charity on Thanksgiving Day. Even the pris- 
oner behind the barred gates and stone walls 
should on this day have a gleam of friendly 
sympathy and loving charity thrown across his 
hard and bitter pathway. 

If possible, let the home gathering be very 
complete when the Thanksgiving gala day re- 
turns. This is an American custom which 
should not fall into desuetude. 

Good Dr. Cuyler, writing of Christian ex- 
perience, exclaims : 

^^In the depths of a devou.t, loyal, praying and 

trustful heart Christ kindles a glow that cannot 

be drowned by pains of sickness, or storms of 

adversity, or even by the tears of bereavement. 

One of the most sunny Christians I ever knew 

was racked with the tortures of a rheumatism 

that had distorted every limb. In the darkest 

hours Jesus can give triumphant ^songs in the 

night.' When Dr. Horace Bushnell was writing 

a letter of consolation to a brother who had met 

with a severe bereavement he said, ^Soften your 

grief by much tJianksgiving * Gratitude for 

what Jesus has done for us sinners, for what he 

284 



Trustful To-morrows 

gives us every day, for what he has laid up in 
store for us in heaven, and for the solid assur- 
ance that we shall meet our loved ones there — ► 
such gratitude can pour its rays into our hearts 
and put a new song into our mouths. 

"Is it possible for all of us who claim to be 
Christ^s followers to live steadily in the bright 
sunshine of Christ's love ? It must be possible ; 
for the Master never bids us do what we cannot 
perform or be what we cannot become. Sinless 
perfection may not be attainable in this world, 
or unalloyed happiness. But there is one thing 
which all of Christ's redeemed people can do. 
and that is to keep themselves in the atmosphere 
of his love. ^Abide ye in my love.' It is our 
fault and our shame that we spend so many days 
in the chilling fogs or under the heavy clouds 
of unbelief, or in the bleak atmosphere of con- 
formity to the world.'' 

Tauler wrote tersely, by way of admonition : 
"Think not that God will always be caressing 
his children, or shine upon their head, or kindle 
their hearts, as he does at the first. He does 
so only to lure us to himself, as the falconer 
lures the falcon with its gay hood. Our Lord 

works with his children so as to teach them 

285 



Cheerful To-days and 

afterwards to work themselves; as he bade 
Moses to make the tables of stone after the 
pattern of the first, which he had made himself. 
Thus, after a time, God allows man to depend 
upon himself, and no longer enlightens, and 
stimulates, and rouses him. We must stir np 
and rouse ourselves, and be content to leave oS 
learning, and no more enjoy feeling and fire, 
and must now serve the Lord with strenuous 
industrv and' at our own cost. Our Lord acts 
as a prudent father, who, while his children are 
young, lets them live at his cost, and manages 
everj^thing for them. What is needful for them 
he provides, and lets them go and play ; and so 
long as this lasts they are at leisure, free from 
care, happy, and generous at their father's ex- 
pense. Afterwards he gives a portion of his 
estate into their own hands, because he will 
have them to take care of themselves and earn 
their own living, to leave off childish plaj^, and 
thus learn how to grow rich/' 

We may at least refrain from ever expressing 
dissatisfaction with God's dealings and discon- 
tent with our circumstances. B3'' the time to- 
morrow reaches us to-day's discomfort will have 

fled. Each day bears only its own burden, and 

286 



Trusteul To-morrows 

everj^ burden is bound together and labeled, 
^^By the will of God/^ Are we depending for 
our joy, not on our earthly environment^ but 
on that which hour by hour the Lord bestows? 
Then shall we ever despond ? Shall we not al- 
ways wear the brightness of heaven on our faces 
and in our hearts ? Let us constantly pray : 

**Drop Thy sweet dews of quietness 

Till all our strivings cease ; 
Take from our souls the strain and stress 
And let our ordered lives confess 

The beauty of Thy peace." 
287 



Cheerful To-days and 



CHAPTER XXX 
Beyond the Horizon's Eim 

One of these days it will all be over, 

Sorrow and laughter, loss and gain, 
Meetings and partings of friend and lover, 

Joy that was often tinged with pain. 
One of these days will our hands be folded. 

One of these days will the work be done, 
Finished the pattern our lives have molded, 

Ended our labor beneath the sun. 

One of these days will the heartache leave us, 

One of these days will the burden drop ; 
Never again shall a hope deceive us, 

Never again shall our progress stop. 
Freed from the blight of the vain endeavor, 

Winged with the health of immortal life. 
One of these daj^s we shall quit forever 

All that is vexing in earthly strife. 

One of these days we shall know the reason. 

Haply, of much that perplexes now ; 
One of these days, in the Lord's good season, 

Light of his peace shall adorn the brow. 
Blessed, though out of tribulation, 

Lifted to dwell in his sun-bright smile, 
Happy to share the great salvation. 

Can we not patiently tarry awhile? 

The eye which gazes beyond the horizon's 

rim and expects the hour when the day shall 

288 



Trustful To-morrows 

break in the new life above may grow weary, 
but it will not grow discouraged. For we walk 
by the starlight of the promises as well as by the 
sunshine of daily mercies. We need never fear. 
One who knows our infirmities is always at our 
side. 

The pleasure of good company is with us^ too, 
on the road home. True, there remaineth much 
land to be possessed. Millions of our fellow 
beings are yet in the darkness of heathenism. 

The false gods are not yet overthrown nor are 
the idols utterly abolished. But we may help 
send the Gospel, and we shall gain a blessing if 
we do so in the spirit of the little East-end 
London girl who wanted to do her share : 

It was only a silver sixpence, 

Battered and worn and old. 
But worth to the child that held it 

As much as a piece of gold. 

A poor little crossing-sweeper, 

In the wind and rain all day — 
For one who gave her a penny 

There were twenty who bade her nay. 

But she carried the bit of silver — 

A light in her steady face, 
And her step on the crowded pavement 

Full of a childish grace — 
289 



Cheerful To-days and 

Straight to the tender pastor ; 

And "Send it," she said, "for me, 
Dear sir, to the heathen children 

On the other side of the sea. 

"Let it help in telling the story 
Of the love of the Lord most high, 

Who came from the world of glory 
For a sinful world to die.'* 

"Send only half of it, Maggie," 

The good old minister said, 
"And keep the rest for yourself, dear ; 

You need it for daily bread." 

"Ah, sir," was the ready answer, 

In the blessed Bible words, 
"I would rather lend it to Jesus : 

For the silver and gold are the Lord's, 

"And the copper will do for Maggie." 

I think, if we all felt so. 
The wonderful message of pardon 

Would soon through the dark earth go. 

Soon should the distant mountains 
And the far-off isles of the sea 

Hear of the great salvation 

And the truth that makes men free. 

Alas ! do we not too often 

Keep our silver and gold in store, 

And grudgingly part with our copper, 
Counting the pennies o'er, 

And claiming in vain the blessing, 
That the Master gave to one 

Who dropped her mites as the treasure 
A whole day's toil had won? 
290 



Trustful To-morrows 

A toil-worn retTirned missionary was address- 
ing a group of women the other day, and slie 
said, with the sound of tears in her voice, ^'^Oh, 
von would love to help the Lord's work on if 
you Iview abont it/^ The trouble too often is, 
friends, that we do not know. We look at our 
own garden gate, not at the rim of the sky 
where disappears the ship which bears along the 
foreign missionaries going on their errands of 
love. Not all of ns are to blame for this indif- 
ference. Our city households do, some of them 
at least, keep in touch with Ceylon, India, 
China, and our workers there. Yery frequently 
one discovers in country homes, remote from 
the railroad, a great deal of good periodical 
literature. Especially are some of these house- 
holds well informed as to foreign and home 
missions. Inquiring of a busy house mistress, 
whose home had been filled with summer 
boarders from June until September, when she 
found time to read all her books and magazines, 
the answer came promptly, '^1 read up in the 
long winter evenings. My family is small then, 
and I have plenty of time; I just save every- 
thing till then, and I go through my pile from 

first to last.^^ Certainly there is no lack either 

291 



Cheerful To-days and 

of interest or of information in and about the 
Lord's work on the part of these busy^ hard- 
working, bnt most intelligent women. 

It is by reading and by attending meetings of 
prajTr for missions that we get to know about 
and to love them and their various phases of 
effort. There are the preaching, the visiting, 
the teaching, the translating, the comforting 
ministrations to mind and body, which compose 
the several sorts of work at a mission station. 
Are we praying for all, aiding all, giving to all ? 
Some days are brighter to us than others be- 
cause we may say at nightfall, 

God gave me something very sweet to be mine own 

this day — 
A precious opportunity a word for Christ to say ; 
A soul that my desire might reach ; a work to do for 

him ; 
And now I thank him for this grace, ere yet the light 

grows dim. 

No service that he sends me on can be so welcome aye : 
To guide a pilgrim's weary feet within the narrow 

way; 
To share the loving Shepherd's quest, and so, by brake 

and fen. 
To find for him his wandering lambs, the erring sons 

of men. 

I did not seek this blessed thing ; it came a rare sur- 
prise, 

Flooding my heart with dearest joy, as, lifting wistful 
eyes, 

292 



Trustful To-morrows 

Heaven's light upon a dear one's face shone plain and 

clear on mine ; 
And there an unseen third, I felt, was waiting — One 

divine. 

So in this twilight hour I kneel, and pour my grateful 

thought 
In song and prayer to Jesus for the gifts this day hath 

brought. 
Sure never service is so sweet, nor life hath so much 

zest, 
As when he bids me speak for him, and then he does 

the rest. 

I may be mistaken^ but as I have gone about 
the world it has seemed to me that the happiest 
and most gracious family life has existed where 
the family looked ever beyond the horizon's rim, 
and lived as iinited by a common bond in Christ. 
We cannot but be sweet and srentle if we are imi- 
tators of him who ^'^pleased not himself.'^ We 
cannot but be happy if we have a common aim, 
a common interest, higher than mere worldli- 
ness and money making, and the habit of con- 
stant reference of every little and large thing to 
the Lord as the arbiter of our lives ; yet, gazing 
heavenward, we are for the present held fast by 
cords of might to the earth wherein we dwell, 
and it is worth our while to consider our ways 

in the household. 

20 293 



Cheerful To-days and 

Our manners in the family are very apt to be 
the sincere expressions, as they are the uncon- 
scious revelations, of our prevailing and dom- 
inant states of mind. Character is indicated 
by the tricks of speech and of gesture, the tones 
of voice, the politeness or the rudeness of daily 
deportment, and by a hundred small things 
which are automatic; things of which we take 
no note, perhaps of which we are quite unaware. 
Just as an habitually gentle and controlled per- 
son has a quiet and serene face, and as a tem- 
pestuous and unrestrained nature writes its 
record on the countenance, so the manners of 
a family set it apart as well bred or the reverse, 
and the family air stamps each individual of 
the clan. 

Why do people residing under the same roof 
gain a certain resemblance? Originally, it 
may be, their features were cast in different 
molds; they started in being unlike, but time, 
and familiarity, and an incessant process of 
unconscious imitation, has brought about a 
marked similarity, so that the loving husband 
and wife actually look alike, with a subtler and 
more spiritual likeness than the mere surface 

resemblance of kinship. 

294 



Trustful To-morrows 

When the overwrought and overtired mother 
scolds her fractions child^ allowing her fretful- 
ness to sharpen her accents and speaking with 
the stormj^ emphasis of anger^ she does not 
mean permanently to influence her little one's 
manner^ but she is doing so nevertheless. The 
child grows querulous^ reflecting the nervous 
susceptibility to strain which makes the mother 
unamiable. Placidity, serenity, a tranquil calm 
of strength and sweetness in combination, seem 
to have vanished from manv homes wherein 
people are hurried and worried, distraught and 
care-laden. 

Our manners may help to control our minds. 
So subtle is the connection between body and 
spirit, whenever we can absolutely require of the 
former perfect repose, the repression of im- 
patient movements and of irritated speech, the 
spirit gains time to conquer itself and finds its 
lost poise. To go alone, sit perfectly still and 
refuse to allow even so much as a frown or a 
pucker upon one's face, to do this when circum- 
stances are peculiarly trying or when one is 
aware that weariness will presently degenerate 
to crossness, may save one from a humiliating 

outbreak, and add permanently to the stock of 

295 



Cheerful To-days and 

self-control which we all need as capital for 
life. 

Family manners, apart from the relations of 
parents and children, which imply a reciprocal 
consideration, are apt to suffer from too much 
candor. We speak with great plainness in the 
circle of our own kindred; we comment too 
freely on foibles ; we express the contrary opin- 
ion too readily and with too little courtesy. A 
slight infusion of formality never harms social 
intercourse, either in the family or elsewhere. 

Beyond this too common mistake of an over- 
bluntness arid brusque freedom in the manners 
of a household, in some of our homes there is a 
greater fault even — a lack of demonstration. 
There is the deepest, sincerest love in the home, 
the brothers and sisters would cheerfully die for 
one another if so great a sacrifice wei'e de- 
manded, but the love is ice-locked behind a bar- 
rier of reserve. Caresses are infrequent, words 
of affection are seldom spoken. It may be 
urged with truth and some show of reason that 
in the very homes where this absence of demon- 
stration is most marked there is complete 
mutual understanding, and no possibility of 

doubt or misgiving, and, so far as it goes, this is 

296 



Trustful To-morrows 

well. But often young hearts long unspeak- 
ably for some gentle sign of love's presence — 
the lingering touch of a tender hand on the 
head, the good-night kiss, the word of praise, 
the recognition of affection. Older hearts, too, 
are sometimes empty, and many of us, younger 
and older, are kept on short rations all our lives, 
when our right, on our Father's road to our 
Father's house, is to be fed with the finest of 
the wheat, and enough of it; just as those who 
ate manna in the wilderness had always an en- 
tire provision, not a stinted supply. 

Another suggestion which should not be over- 
looked is the importance of politeness to the 
little ones. To snub a small laddie needlessly, 
to order a child about on errands here and there 
instead of civilly preferring a request as one 
does to an older person, in each case is an in- 
vasion of the rights of childhood. The child to 
whom everybody practices politeness will in 
turn be himself ready to oblige and agreeable 
in manner, for the stamp of the family is as 
plainly to be seen on us every one as the stamp 
of the mint on the coin, and it is as indelible for 
time — and why not, also, for eternity ? 

A child sometimes slips away from our grasp 

297 



CiiEEiiFUL To-days and 

all in a moment. The sweet young daughter of 
the house was going to school, week before last. 
Yesterday, after a very brief illness, she was 
not, for God had taken her. The baby went to 
bed well, but croup came in the night and a 
mother's arms are empty. Oh, the deep grief 
over tiny graves, the scalding tears that blind ns 
when we look at vacant chairs ! While they are 
with ns let ns do all we can to make onr dar- 
lings happy ; while they remain let our tones be 
sweet, our acts unselfish, our love unstinted. 
When God calls them let us have no remorse 
which might have been avoided, but let us not 
refuse consolation, for. 

They never quite leave us, our friends who have passed 
Through the shadow of death to the sunlight above ; 
A thousand sweet memories are holding them fast 
To the places they bless with their presence and lovec 

The work which they left and the books which they 

read 
Speak mutely, though still with an eloquence rare • 
And the songs that thej^ sung, and dear words they 

said, 
Yet linger and sigh on the desolate air. 

And oft when alone, and as oft in the throng, 
Or when evil allures us or sin draweth nigh, 
A whisper comes gently, ''Nay, do not the wrong," 
And we feel that our weakness is pitied on high. 

298 



Trustful To-morrows 

In the dew-threaded morn and the opaline eve, 

When the children are merry or crimsoned with sleep. 

We are comforted, even as lonely we grieve, 

For the thoughts of their rapture forbids us to weep. 

We toil at our tasks in the burden and heat 
Of life's passionate noon : they are folded in peace. 
It is well. We rejoice that their heaven is sweet. 
And one day for us will all bitterness cease. 

We, too, will go home o'er the river of rest. 
As the strong and the lovely before us have gone ; 
Our sun will go down in the beautiful west 
To rise in the glory that circles the throne. 

Until then we are bound by our love and our faith 

To the saints who are walking in Paradise fair. 

They have passed beyond sight, at the touching of 

death, 
But they live, like ourselves, in God's infinite care. 



Warning 



In the time of our fullness and thrift, 
Ere the time of our loss and our dole. 

Let the angels who guard us uplift 
A warning to every soul. 

Oh ! heed it and hear it, lest all unaware 

We waken some day to the gloom of despair. 

We shall never be sorry for love ; 

For the words that are patient and sweet ; 
For the hardness repressed, 
For the anger unguessed. 

For the grace that is swift to entreat. 

299 



Cheerful To-days and 

We shall never be sorry for hope 
That heartened the weak and the tried, 

That made them the bolder to cope 
With the evil one, close to their side ; 

For the pity we've shown 

To the souls that alone 
Were stemming some fierce, rushing tide. 

We shall never be sorry for care 
To the old or the little ones given ; 

Nor ever regret the swift prayer 
That went to our Father in heaven 

For meekness and cheer 

When the outlook was drear, 
For faith when our courage was riven. 

In the time of our fullness and thrift, 
Ere the time of our dole and our loss. 

Let the angels who guard us uplift 
A voice against cleaving to dross ; 

Let us hear it and heed it, lest all unaware 

We waken some day to the gloom of despam 

300 



Trustful To-morrows 



CHAPTER XXXI 
The Habit of Holding 0:^" 

A:\roxG excellent wearing habits^ in this age 
of Iiaste and competition^ we should set a high 
value on that of holding on. Having decided 
on a course of action, looked at it from everv 
point of view^ and taken stock of ourselves and 
of the situation^ we should first Inieel down alone 
in our closets^, or with our families if the matter 
concern them, and ask God's blessing. Let the 
errand be what it ma}^, the disciple does not go 
forward without the Master^s assurance that 
he is with him. Xext, we should begin with 
earnestness, zeal, and discretion; enthusiasm 
held in check by wisdom and knowledge. Last, 
we should hold on. 

The world highly values success, especially 

the success which is apparent. In no walk of 

life is success attainable bv the man or the 

woman who has not acquired persistence, the 

art of holding on. In the inspired page of 

Eevelation the promise is, over and over, made 

301 



Cheerful To-days and 

of reward to ^^him that overcometh/^ Over- 
coming is holding on. 

We see children full of the zest of beginning. 
The first chapter of the new book, the first week 
at the new school, the opening tasks of the new 
term, fill them with eager delight. It is the 
^lan of the novel enterprise which excites and 
stimulates them to effort. So in Leagues, and 
Endeavor societies of every variety, there is 
apt to be great ardor at the outset. The testing 
time arrives when the vear has reached its 
middle period, when the attraction of novelty 
has waned, when what is needed is not an en- 
thusiastic start, bu.t steady staying power. 
Blessings on those young people who have the 
good habit of holding on; who do not dread! 
the quiet performance of obscure duties; who 
can march on even when the music in advance 
is temporarily silent. 

Our greatest sailors and soldiers, our most 
eminent statesmen, our most renowned mission- 
aries, our scholars famed for research and ac- 
curacy, have had the habit of holding on. 

You are perhaps very near the foot of the 

ladder to-day, and to climb high will mean a 

struggle full of pluck and of dogged determina- 

302 



Trustful To-moreows 

tion. Eemember that God lias given yon a 
foothold, and that he now expects yon valiantly 
to fight for yonrself . Lose no advantage^ never 
shirk a hard task, be conrteons, be obliging, be 
unselfish; bnt through every opposition, and 
even in the face of disaster and disappointment, 
hold on in your way. 

It is a fine thing to make defeat your step- 
ping stone to victory. 

There are failures which God sends and God 
plans, and which are in his sight far more 
radiant than anv human success. There are 
those carried wounded to the rear, or dropped 
out of the procession, whom God honors with 
his ^HYell done, good and faithful servant V' 
But of these it may be said without hesitation 
that they possessed the habit of holding on to 
what seemed to them right ; that they did their 
duty manfully, and rounded out their day's 
work, more anxious about the work than about 
the wages. 

I would warn those who would enjoy cheerful 

to-days and inherit trustful to-morrows against 

being over solicitous for the success which is 

estimated in money. Ours is a commercial age, 

and we are apt, because it is in the air about us, 

303 



Cheerful To-DxIys axd 

to admire too highly the acquisition of wealth. 
As a means to an end^ and that end the service 
of God and the elevation of man^ wealth is de- 
sirable. For all elsC;, the words of the wise man 
remain eternally judicious^ ^^Give me neither 
poverty nor riches/^ The middle course is the 
happy course. Work done for mercenary rea- 
sons alone is never the highest and the best 
work. "Give ns the glory of going on/^ sings 
the poet. 

To hold on as the scientific student does in 
the laboratory^ that he may gain knowledge 
along lines which will alleviate suffering and 
mitigate disease^ to hold on as the general does 
when the campaign is a long one and the odds 
are against him^ to hold on as the mother does 
through the years when her little ones are in the 
crib and the nursery^ to hold on as the pastor 
does in his quiet round of loving ministry, 
studying, toiling, striving, comforting — thus to 
hold on is to win and keen the divine favor. 

-L 

Thus holding on, we may 

"Look up and not down ; 

Look forward and not back; 

Look out and not in ; and 

Lend a hand.^^ 
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Trustful To-jMorhows 

Away back in the second book of Chronicles 
we are told of the good King Hezekiah^ that 
*^he wrought that which was good and right and 
faithful before the Lord his God. And in every 
work that he began in the service of the house of 
God^ and in the law^ and in the commandments, 
to seek his God, he did it with all his heart, and 
prospered/^ 

King Hezekiah had mastered the art of hold- 
ing on. 

305 



Cheerful To-days and 



CHAPTER XXXII 
OxE Word More eor Our Girls 

To many a girl the abandonment of her hope 
to attend college is the greatest disappointment 
of her young life. Her mother needs her at 
home, or her father thinks she has had a suf- 
ficient amount of school discipline;, or there is 
not money enough to make a college education 
practicable — for some reason or other the step 
cannot be taken; and the young woman is 
obliged to make her plans along different lines 
from those which she had intended. In the 
case of one exceptionally gifted girl, very dear 
to me in later years, her mother's death throw- 
ing upon the brave young shoulders the care and 
oversight of a family of small brothers and sis- 
ters made college impossible. She could not be 
spared from the desolate home, where she 
speedily became the sister-mother and the 
homemaker and housekeeper. 

Another young woman, prepared for college 

and anxious to go because of a genuine enthu- 

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Trustful To-aiobrows 

siasm for learning, was compelled at twenty 
years of age to resign her ambition lest she 
should use means which were required for the 
education of younger children. Twelve years 
later this woman, who had bided her time, never 
complaining, never querulous, invariably pa- 
tient, cheerful and bright, was enabled to fulfill 
her desire and she is in college now; resolutely 
taking up the old tools and studying happily 
among her juniors, with whom she is a great 
favorite. And no wonder: at heart she is as 
young as the youngest. 

I have found it my greatest comfort, girls, in 
every situation to say to myself, '^^This is God's 
appointment for me, and it therefore must be 
right.'' When we accept God's will as best it is 
a pillow under the head than which nothing 
could be softer and more peaceful. If it is for 
our advantage to go or to stay we do not know, 
but God knows; and all our days are arranged 
for us according to his plan. 

Supposing, therefore, that college is out of 
the question, what hinders a bright, keen-witted 
girl from making the very best of her time and 
talents at home ? She may take up a Chautau- 
qua course, or a course prescribed by the Ep- 

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Cheerful To-days and 

worth League^ and her reading may be definite 
and systematic^ not haphazard and occasional. 
She will see for herself that while the news- 
paper keeps one informed as to current events, 
and well-selected fiction pleases the imagina- 
tion, yet neither the nev/spaper nor the novel 
can alone give a woman a cultivated mind or 
discipline her intellect. If she is wise, and in 
earnest, she will set herself to a resolute and 
persistent and thorough study of some branch 
of science or some period of history. One girl 
found it feasible to follow her brother's college 
course at home, and she took up in her own 
room, and without the spur of emulation or the 
assistance of a tutor, everything that he did — 
Latin, Greek, French, philosophy and mathe- 
matics — slighting nothing, and keeping pace 
with him to the end; the only difference then 
being that he had a diploma and she had none. 
All the substantial good of college training be- 
longed to her as well as to him. 

Many girls have not the leisure for so much 
consecutive work as was here gone over. Do 
not despair on that account. A half hour de- 
voted to study every day, without a break, will 

give results at the end of the year which will be 

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Trustful To-mohrows 

simply surprising. I have seen a young woman 
occupied in a factory in New York^ toiling early 
and late and having no place at home to study, 
who, availing herself of the reading room of a 
working girl's club, has made herself familiar 
with English history from the earliest days un- 
til the Victorian era. Everything against her, 
but courage and will and a love of books carry- 
ing her splendidly forward ! 

Avail yourself of the lecture courses open to 
you, near j^our home, and ask your friends who 
have gone farther than yourself for a little en- 
lightenment when you reach a difficult place. 
Libraries and books of reference may be found 
in most towns ; if you have none in your neigh- 
borhood your pastor will probably be willing 
to lend you books or to guide you in their pur- 
chase. Little by little add to your stock of 
literature, buying only after careful thought as 
to whether you are sure you need the book on 
which your desire has been fixed. A dictionary 
and an encyclopedia are immeasurably valuable 
to a student who is not near a library. 

By the daily practice of reading good books, 

and by seeking the friendship of refined and 

intelligent men and women, you will gain an 
21 309 



Cheerful To-days and 

appreciation of literature and of scholarship 
quite equal to that which your friend obtains 
in her life of the school. Do not suffer yourself 
to be slipshod and careless as to your vocabular}^ 
to use slangs or to drop into provincialisms. If 
is true that very well informed persons do use 
these, but they do not belong to a lady, and they 
are blots on her manner of expression — tattered 
fringe on an elegant garment. Better be pre- 
cise and pedantic than heedless of your mother- 
tongue and ungrammatical in conversation or 
writing. Eemember that there is nothing open 
to us so educational and so improving on its 
very lowest plane as regular attendance at a 
place of worship. Merely always going to 
church and giving one's attention fully to the 
preacher, merely dwelling on the themes he 
touches, largely helps those who must have cul- 
ture but cannot have college. 

But if one does go, and many of our young 
women are thus privileged, let her determine to 
be on the Lord's side from the outset. None 
of us can stay in utter solitude, without com- 
radeship, and be happy or entirely useful. That 
idea of life which implies isolation is not whole- 
some. It is worth while for us to think a little 

310 



Trustful To-imorrows 

'about our friends — what we do for them and 
what they do for us. 

Should an entire class assembled in college 
for the first time be composed altogether of 
strangers^ some from Kansas^ some from Ten- 
nessee^ some from Florida, others from Maine, 
still others from Texas, 'New York, Ohio and 
Colorado, with a sprinkling of girls from the 
Sandwich Islands and Japan, it would not be 
long before the various young women would 
shake apart from the mass and settle into 
groups. These groups would again subdivide 
into smaller circles, and the circles would finally 
fall into the partnership of individuals. The 
closer welding of the intimate friendship of the 
twos would not interfere with the pleasant min- 
gling of the threes and fours and sevens, while 
over all, and uniting all, would be the beautiful 
and subtle growth and continuance of the class 
feeling; a sentiment which survives through 
life and is one of lifers most delightful experi- 
ences. The girl from Texas might find con- 
genial qualities and similar tastes in the girl 
from Maine, and the soft-voiced Kentuckian 
might choose for her dearest confidante a crisp 

and clever young woman from New York. In- 

311 



Cheerful To-days and 

evitably each would modify the other and help 
the other on. 

This is one of the best offices of friendship — 
to be helpful where one can. I never thought 
very highly of the plan that friends should 
candidly tell each other of their faults. The 
office of critic is rather ungracious^ and very, 
very few persons are able to listen without an- 
noyance to the recital of their defects, as seen 
by even friendly eyes. As a matter of course a 
girl expects reproof or suggestion at times from 
her mother, or her teacher, but she does not care 
for it from her school or college friends, and, 
even if she is equally candid in return, the mu- 
tual inspection is usually fatal to affection. 
Far better it is to help by example ; by being so 
true, so straightforward and so unselfish that 
your friends emulate you. To live with some 
people is to be lifted to a broader and higher 
plane and a purer air. In forming our college 
friendships we are probably entering into pleas- 
ant bonds which will never be unloosed, and we 
should try to be so sincerely loving that our 
friends will receive from us only our best. 
Most of us make unconscious revelations of our- 
selves when we are off guard. Our living 

312 



Trustful To-morrows 

should be of an order so pure and sweet that we 
would never be afraid of being found out ; that 
we might always be sure that in our most inti- 
mate moments nothing in us should hurt an- 
other soul. 

What do we ask of our dear friends? For 
one thing, entire trust. Girls use many caress- 
ing phrases and tender names to each other, and 
there are girls whose natures seem to demand a 
good deal of demonstration. Now, there is 
no harm in this, to a certain extent, but the love 
which can go without much verbal expression 
is apt to be the more deeply rooted. Jealousy 
should never be permitted to creep into friend- 
ship, and a girl should take herself at once to 
task if she perceives that she is entertaining 
suspicions of her friend, or is vexed at the com- 
ing of a third person into the compact. 

We are many-sided beings, and our natures 
have many needs; a great capacity for loving 
is a splendid equipment for life. Let us not 
dwarf and stunt ourselves by selfish narrowness, 
and above all let us shield our hearts from dis- 
trust; from readiness to imagine affronts and 
from that over-sensitiveness which believes that 

our friend could intentionally wound us. 

313 



Cheerful To-days and 

To our friends we should give, sympathy; 
should be interested in their endeavors and am- 
bitionS;, should be ready to listen when they 
have anything to tell and to counsel if they ask 
advice. The foundation of sympathy is unself- 
ishnesS;, ^^a heart at leisure from itself/^ Sim- 
ply to be glad with others and sad with others is 
not enough; we should go farther^ and live in 
our friends^ lives. We may not know their 
people but we should try to care about them^ 
and nothing which even remotely concerns our 
comrades should seem to us of no moment. 
Sympathy^ trust and common interests will 
very closely unite those who are thrown to- 
gether in the contact of daily life through a 
period of four successive years. 

I cannot conceive of an enduring friendship 
in which there is in both parties no love to 
Christ. The disciple of Jesus has something 
so lovely and dear as a part of her life that she 
longs to share it. Christ is so much more to 
her than any earthly friend that aversion to 
him^ or indifference^ or hostility^, if persevered 
in, must repel her from anyone, however other- 
wise attractive. Alienation from him must 

deeply grieve the true disciple. There is no re- 

314 



Trustful To-morrows 

lation so perfect as that of two congenial 
natures who love the Master and are trying to 
follow him. Of this I am sure^ that the Christ- 
lover will never rest until she has brought her 
friend to the blessedness which she knows ; and 
that^ if her friend persistently refuses Christ 
and turns from him^ in the end, and from 
the operation of a law as relentless as that of 
gravitation, their friendship will cease. For 
friendship demands confidence and sympathy 
and a life in common interests day by day, and 
these cannot exist in perfection between those 
who love Christ and those who hate him. 

Never Too Soon 

Never too soon? For what, my dear? 

Never too soon to choose the best, 
And set the mark of your living clear, 

And bring your soul to the highest test. 

Never too soon to stand for God, 
To lift the banner of Christ on high ; 

The foe with his legions is all abroad. 
And his challenging giants are drawing nigh. 

Our girls are interested in deciding on their 

future employments and callings. Among the 

newer avocations journalism beckons many, for 

the reason, above others, that it may more read- 

315 



Cheerful To-days and 

ily be entered than law or medicine or teach- 
ing. The young woman who expects to teach 
needs very thorough preparation^ and, in these 
days, must if possible specialize. If she wishes 
to instruct in the higher mathematics, or in art, 
she will be the better equipped if after receiv- 
ing her diploma she can secure several years of 
postgraduate study either at home or abroad. 
If she is to be a doctor, the medical college ex- 
acts a regular and severely rigid course of 
training, and there is no royal road hewed for 
the feet of the feminine lawyer. She must 
read grave legal books, and serve a precisely 
similar apprenticeship to that demanded by the 
authorities from her brother. 

A young woman must begin as a journalist 
at the foot of the ladder. She may go into the 
newspaper arena from the high school. Several 
of our most successful women editors have 
never been to college. Her equipment will be, 
an outfit of good sense, mental alertness, a 
talent for pleasing others in selection, obedience 
to orders, and ability to read, to spell, and to 
write good clear English. Much familiarity 
with Latin and Greek does not so surely pre- 
pare a young woman for successful journalism 

316 



Trustful To-morrows 

as a good working knowledge of forceful every- 
day English. 

A less ambitious but not less honorable career 
is open to young women who choose to become 
the assistants of mothers in bringing up their 
children. I do not mean by this merely the 
nursery governess or the governess of older 
children. The mother assistant is more like 
an aunt or an elder sister as she fits into the 
household^ and relieves the mother of burdens. 
We are learning that little children should not 
be given over into the hands of ignorant and 
illiterate peasant women from other lands^ just 
in the period when they are most easily im- 
pressed by companionship with those about 
them. The office of mother^s assistant should 
be filled by an educated lad}^;, and no college 
graduate need hesitate to assume it. Also, 
there are women of large means who are able 
and willing to pay liberally for such service. 

I hope there are a multitude of girls who^ 
when college days are over^ will be willing and 
happy to remain quietly at home^ filling in the 
chinks there and blessing the lives of their par- 
ents. In our time^ it is almost exceptional to 

find a grown-up daughter who is not reluctant 

317 



Cheerful To-days and 

to do this ; each longs for a sphere of wider oc- 
cupation. But to some the Lord may have 
assigned only the household with its blessed 
obscurity; only the little lowly place in the 
vineyard, under his own eye. 

^^One thing is needful/^ Still we hear him 
saying this, and if of any one of us he shall say 
that she hath ^'chosen the good part/^ what 
more can we desire? To be thorough, to be 
conscientious, to be diligent and faithful, are 
the needs of the hour for all women. 

From silken cords of earth's delight, 

From iron chains of care, 
O set us free when in thy sight. 

Dear Lord, we kneel in prayer. 

Forbid that dreams of ease and cheer, 

Or transient thoughts of pride, 
Should make a chilling atmosphere 

To drift us from thy side. 

Forgive if moaning discontent 

In unbelief complains ; 
Forgive if, when our hearts are rent, 

We think but of their pains. 

Still come thyself in darkest hours 
And cleave the gloom with rays 

So bright that all our grateful powers 
Shall turn from grief to praise. 
318 



Trustful To-morrows 

Still consecrate our joyful times 

With bliss beyond compare, 
While faith the spirit's strength sublimes 

And robes of light we wear. 

Oh, lift us to the better life ! 

The shadows come and go, 
But where thou art above the strife, 

The winds of heaven blow. 
319 



"il- 2 1903 



^1- 



